Track legend Dame Kelly Holmes hails Kinross-shire pair for making award shortlist

Olympic heroinne is guest of honour at FPSG Athlete of the Year

British track legend Dame Kelly Holmes believes the shortlist for FPSG Athlete of the Year, which includes Kinross-shire duo Laura Muir and Eilidh Doyle, could easily have reached double figures.

The double Olympic champion, who won 800m and 1,500m gold in Athens in 2004, is guest of honour for this year’s November awards in Glasgow.

Five athletes are in contention for the main award backed by sponsors FPSG with a trio of track medallists – Doyle, Muir and Jake Wightman – joined by hill runner Charlotte Morgan, who won the World Long Distance Hill Champs, and Robbie Simpson, who won Gold Coast 2018 marathon bronze.

Holmes will help present the top award on November 3 and is relieved she has not been involved in the selection process.

She said: “It has been such a superb year for so many Scottish athletes, across various events, that the one thing I am glad I haven’t been involved in has been choosing the shortlists.

“All five of these are great nominations. “And there’s a lot of talent there, too, on the age group awards and fine performers in the masters and para categories.”

Zoey Clark, Maria Lyle, Mark Dry and Eilish McColgan won international track and field medals this year at the World Indoors, Commonwealths or Europeans as well as Doyle, Muir and Wightman, while Beth Dobbin and Chris O’Hare smashed Scottish outdoor Records at 100m and 1,500m respectively.

Callum Hawkins won the FPSG Athlete of the Year award in 2017, with Muir, Doyle and Lynsey Sharp having dominated the preceding half-dozen years.

On Doyle, Holmes said: “What a year Eilidh has had in 2018. Eilidh has won a medal at three different events and she opened up with that bronze on the track in the 400m at the World Indoors in Birmingham and she soon followed that with silver in the 400m hurdles at the Commonwealths.

“Injury definitely hampered her build-up for the Europeans but while the hurdles final didn’t go to plan in Berlin, Eilidh bounced back so quickly – as she often does – by making a great anchor leg contribution to GB’s 4 x 400m bronze.

“She’s also been a figurehead for Scottish athletics and those leadership qualities shone through from the Commonwealths – when she carried the flag into the stadium for Team Scotland.”

Muir, meanwhile, has excelled at a distance Holmes knows well.

She said: “Laura Muir has had a cracking year and that was confirmed by a number one ranking for 2018 in the 1,500m by the IAAF.

“The World Indoors in Birmingham in early March really set her up. To win two medals in three days with a bronze in the 3,000m followed by a silver in the 1,500m was a great achievement – and especially when snow and ice made travelling so difficult in Britain that week.

“I think those medals boosted her confidence even more for the European Championships in Berlin and she dominated that 1,500m final to win well.

“To then go and win the Diamond League final really was the icing on the cake for the season and again she came up with a special performance that night in Brussels to win from the front.

“Laura has already taken a couple of my British records but I will try not to hold that against her.”

Picture: Getty. Laura Muir, left, Eilidh Doyle, centre, have been praised by Dame Kelly Holmes.