FROM LOST SOUL... TO RIGHT BACK ON TRACK
McLeod is on a mission for sporting good after saying farewell to BBC
THE ambition is still strong, though softened by a smile. ‘I suppose I feel like a sporting missionary,’ says Rhona McLeod, a woman whose business is sport, whose passion is sport and whose life has been formed, even dictated, by sport.
A former BBC sports journalist, a former Scottish international athlete, McLeod is the product of a father, now 88, who only gave up cycling two years ago after a nasty incident with a pothole and a mother, 81, who still instructs a country-dancing class.
She is the mother of two junior Scottish athletics internationalists and the wife of an American sports business consultant she met at the wedding of US Olympic team friends.
If these physical connections are strong, then the mindset does not lag behind. ‘One of the aspects of working for the Beeb was that you couldn’t have an opinion,’ she says. ‘I can have an opinion now.’
McLeod, 53, has left the BBC after 24 years to set up her own business to report on sport in her distinctive style. With the sports segment in
Reporting Scotland disappearing, McLeod became more frustrated. It was hardly a Network moment of ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more’, it was more a realisation her priorities differed from the daily news imperatives in Pacific Quay.
‘To me, sports journalism is about telling the stories, reflecting the passion, the excitement, the drama. I want to cover more of the positive, less of the negative side of sport.
‘There was also the Groundhog Day aspect which was frustrating. I was sitting in news meetings hearing the same things I had been hearing 24 years ago… sectarianism, the transfer window, tax cases,’ she explains.
‘I reached a point where I was thinking I am a grown woman. I have done this for so long. I want to concentrate on actual sport, all the hard work and the talent that is out there.’
The loss of the Reporting Scotland sports slot also separated her from news production colleagues.
‘It was like going to the same party for 20 years and then suddenly finding you were uninvited,’ she says. ‘That was an unexpected sadness. I was a lost soul for a wee while.’
The decision to opt for a new life is explained briskly.
‘I simply felt I could be using my time better,’ she adds. ‘The girls are approaching university age and I want to be enjoying them, be more available to them.’
Her older daughter, Briagha, will soon be 17 and Coirilidh is approaching 16. Both have ambitions in athletics and compete in the 80metre hurdles at the moment. Their mum introduced them to hurdles in the playing fields but prefers to have them train in a squad of youngsters their own age.
They are now coached by Chris Baillie, a former Commonwealth Games silver medallist in the hurdles. McLeod, a qualified coach, devotes her time to other children at the Central Athletics Club base in Balfron, Stirlingshire.
McLeod’s leap from the BBC has been energised by a strong belief. ‘It is what I call my missionary approach,’ she says. The smile is followed by a serious statement that would be echoed by many in sport in Scotland.
‘One of the frustrations is that so much money and attention is given to football,’ she continues.
‘Attitudes are so strong. In other countries, you can support a range of sports and people are open-minded to the simple concept of being in love with sport.
‘But here it seems there is a belief that the audience being pandered to is only passionate about football.’
The dismissive attitude, she believes, can be found among some journalists.
‘I have been at elite events where a Scottish athlete has made the semis in an event but no further. Then I have heard journalists decrying this as rubbish,’ she says. ‘But I know what level has been achieved and how the athlete has got there — by working hard, making sacrifices, with little in the way of financial reward.
‘There is heartbreak and hard labour in all of this and it does not deserve to be labelled as rubbish.’
McLeod also asks: ‘How talented are our footballers in world terms?’ This question is rhetorical but Scotland does have world-class competitors, in tennis, swimming, cycling, athletics, boxing and other sports.
However, McLeod is concerned at the cost to parents and the lack of sponsorship and publicity for grass-roots sports.
‘It costs money to do sports,’ she says. She cites as personal evidence the appearance of Coirilidh at a Schools International Athletic Board meeting in Swansea recently.
‘It was a great honour but it cost us £250 for Scotland kit and travel,’ says McLeod. ‘I do not blame Scottish Schools Athletics at all as they would love more funding.
‘We are lucky but how does this impact on families who are struggling to pay bills?’ As a coach, she recently had the experience of a young girl quitting athletics.
‘She told me her mum simply couldn’t afford it any more,’ says McLeod. ‘We know teenage girls leave sport for a variety of reasons but money should not be one of them.’
She also urges sponsors to look at grass-roots sports. ‘I know the money goes to the top-end sports and I see the reasons for that,’ says McLeod.
‘I also know that sponsorship has to work from a business point of view — it’s not a charity donation — but for our sports to flourish in this country we need attractive sponsorship opportunities for businesses at the level where kids are starting out.’
Her own journey began in a back garden in Lenzie where she rushed around, urging her parents to record her jumping over a series of improvised obstacles.
McLeod explains: ‘I would shout: “Time me, time me” as I raced. I always wanted to improve my times.’
She was recognised nationally as a first-year pupil at Lenzie Academy and a career over hurdles and in the long jump beckoned.
McLeod also played hockey and netball at school and urges children to try every sport and not specialise too early. ‘This is advice my girls have followed,’ she says. ‘They enjoy other sports.’
So what has the world of sport given her? This query has echoes of that posed in the Life of Brian about the benefits of Roman rule.
‘It has given everything,’ she insists. ‘It has given my husband. It gave me moments I shared with parents and I now share with my daughters.
‘It has given me a wide experience of life, in terms of meeting people and going to different places.’
Her daughters, too, have benefited from athletics. ‘They have friends the length and breadth of Scotland,’ adds McLeod. ‘They have ambitions and a focus outside the village where they live. They have loads going on so are less concerned with make-up, gossip and endless social media. They enjoy working hard and having fun in their sport.’
She believes sports can give children an understanding of the need to be disciplined and organised. ‘You have to gain a level of independence young,’ she declares.
Her sporting life was illuminated by the greatest moment she witnessed. ‘It was David Sole walking on to the pitch for the Grand Slam decider of 1990,’ she says. ‘I had to introduce him at a function years later and I choked up just thinking about that stride out onto Murrayfield.’
She has, of course, a myriad of memories from covering Olympic and Commonwealth Games as a journalist and running with such as Liz McColgan and Carol Sharp as an athlete. These contemporaries have produced elite athletes in Eilish and Lynsey, but McLeod is content to let her daughters develop at their own pace.
‘My focus professionally now is to follow sport with a renewed passion,’ she says. ‘I will still cover Olympics and elite sport generally but I also want to report and encourage people who are out there but whose stories are neglected.
‘I would love the opportunity to make more sports documentaries. Basically, I just want to tell the sporting stories that are not heard.’
It is a challenging task but one that enthuses McLeod. An interesting chapter now unfolds for the athlete, mum, coach and now storytelling missionary.