Central to success

Rio star Butchart anchors his club to a fifth successive Scottish cross country relay title, ahead of big awards night. Kevin Ferrie reports

THIS time around the hard work had been done by his team-mates but it was apt that the glory leg at yesterday’s Scottish National Cross Country Relay Championships was run by one of the Olympians who is generating hopes of a new golden age of Scottish athletics, as Andrew Butchart led the field home at Cumbernauld.

The Central AC runner who finished sixth in the final of the 5000 metres in Rio – a more impressive Olympic debut than double double champion Mo Farah made in Beijing eight years earlier – was handed a healthy lead after Jamie Crowe had given the Central team a fine start, Michael Wright had powered them into the lead on the second leg and Alistair Hay had reinforced that advantage, making a fifth successive title for the dominant club in men’s Scottish cross country a formality as Butchart set off on the four-kilometre circuit.

However, the 25-year-old knows that he is engaged in a much closer contest over the next few days as a judging panel decides – from among the largest shortlist in recent memory – who will win the Scottish Athlete of the Year prize.

“There are so many names you can list from this year – it’s great,” Butchart said.

He is in no doubt that success has bred success in terms of the overall domestic environment which is having a broader impact as evidenced by the record entry for yesterday’s competition, at a time when participation numbers in many sports are dwindling.

“It definitely has a domino effect in my head,” Butchart said. “When someone has a good run you just want to emulate it or do better and it keeps going and going and going and before we know it we’re all at Olympic Games and in finals and getting close to medals. Hopefully we can keep pushing on and who knows what can happen.”

There is satisfaction, too, that the men are beginning to muscle in on what has been a female dominated contest for several years and Butchart believes the evidence suggests that trend will continue.

“It’s still mostly girls, but Callum [Hawkins] and I have come through and Guy Learmonth is running well,” he said.

“Jake Wightman is another one I think is going to come right through to the top. We’re all still really young too which is great.

“It’s not as if we’ve been at it for a while. This is just the start of what I think could be a great period in Scottish sport and Scottish athletics especially.” While Hawkins’ Kilbarchan AC team was always expected to be off the pace when it came to medal contention, the down-to-earth attitude of Butchart’s fellow Olympian underlined just why things are going so well.

“I just get on with it. I’m just here to race,” he said of the increased attention. “It’s good to turn out for the club. They’ve done a lot for us in the past so it’s nice to be able to pay it back.”

Both he and Butchart are heading to the Pyrenees in the next few days to undertake altitude work with the British team ahead of next month’s trials for the European Cross Country Championships in Liverpool which are expected to be keenly contested.

In the meantime his assessment of his prospects of lifting that Athlete of the Year award next weekend underlines the sense that the sport is in better health than for many years.

He said: “A couple of people have come up to me and said, ‘Surely you’ll win it?’. Then you name the people you are up against and they say, ‘Ah, maybe not’. But we’ll see.