GAMES OF TIGG
Coach makes splash with swimmers
He’s the man poolside with the stopwatch watching the hours tick over for the sake of a split-second finish.
The man who turns up before half seven on weekdays and six on a Saturday to push GB’s finest to stage a medal-winning rehearsal.
So for Steven Tigg , head performance swimming coach at Stirling University, seeing Duncan Scott sweep the board at this year’s major meets was no surprise.
The 21-year- old, who bagged 10 medals between the Commonwealth Games and last month’s Europeans in Glasgow, is joined by the likes of Ross Murdoch and Aimee Willmott in a stellar 14-strong group.
Scott may have been the star but the success to come out of the city of Stirling alone is more than most nations will have on the world stage.
Tigg said: “With Duncan I’ve worked with him so long through being a little junior athlete to an agegroup athlete, to a youth athlete to a senior athlete. I’ve always believed what he is capable of and nothing will ever surprise me with him – ever.
“Just from what I’ve seen on a dayto-day basis and at championships when he was 13, 14, 15, 16, he’s very, very capable.
“He has shown he can really stand up in any situation and race really well. Ultimately that is just his real strength – he loves to race and that’s what separates him.”
Tigg first met Scott just before his eighth birthday. “He could swim breastroke but kind of just on the spot,” he said. “His arms would move him forward, his legs would move him back, so it was kind of there!”
Scott and the cream of the crop aren’t the only ones under Tigg’s tutelage with another 31 in the performance groups behind them, plus a sports union squad that can have up to 80 members.
House music blared out when MailSport visited a training session on the eve of August’s Europeans as Scott, Murdoch and Co put on flippers and tried to beat each other’s times for a length of the pool.
While it’s them making a noise on the podium, it’s the work of Tigg and his team in practice that goes to the heart of the Scottish Sports Awards.
He said: “They have to want to be there, it’s our job as coaches to make them want to come to the pool and to make them want to hang around after sessions and support each other.
“They are there to be the best they can be and to enjoy that process – they work hard when they need to work hard, they work smart when they need to work smart.
“Ultimately the one thing we say is there are shortcuts to a lot of things in life now but there is never going to be a shortcut to being successful in sport.”
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