Huge ask for Scots to hit qualifying standards for Gold Coast Games

THEY will be nursing hangovers and sweeping up the debris on Australia’s Gold Coast two years from today, with the Commonwealth Games there having concluded the previous evening. The 2018 edition will mark the 20th anniversary of Scotland’s combined worst performance in athletics and swimming. The two principal sports won just a single medal each in Kuala Lumpur.

A silver medal by Alison Curbishley at 400 metres and by Alison Sheppard in the 50m freestyle provoked anguish and heartsearching, but the National Lottery raised expectation as well as funding, proving a turning point. The Lottery had kicked in by the 2002 Games in Manchester where the medal tally improved: five in the pool, two in track and field; 12 (10-2) in 2006; and nine (7-2) in 2010. In Glasgow 2014 the joint haul was 14 (10-4), the best since the 15 of pre-lottery Brisbane in 1982, where athletics took 10 to swimming’s five. This was otherwise surpassed only by London in 1934 (17) when athletics (10) achieved the rarely to be repeated feat of upstaging the swimmers.

The 2018 qualifying standards for athletics and swimming, announced recently, are stringent, team-restricting, and thought-provoking.

In Glasgow, there was an aquatics team of 44 and 58 in athletics and the team for the Gold Coast will likely be significantly less than half that.

Indeed, swimming could be down to just 16. Ability to finish in the top six (formerly top eight) is now swimming’s requirement. Teams will be smaller – dictated by Australian organisers.

Scottish Swimming has made a radical change to their selection procedure. They will rank all competitors according to the percentage by which they are inside the qualifying standard and will nominate the top 16. More may possibly be added at the discretion of the performance director and national coach.

The 16 are likely to require to beat existing Scottish records to qualify. Such intense criteria has helped drive up recent GB and domestic performance, and more medals than track and field with fewer competitors has become the norm for swimming.

Scottish swimmers won three gold, three silver, four bronze in Glasgow. Athletics took one gold, two silver, one bronze. The gold was in visually impaired sprinting, a new addition to the programme.

Now, however, scottishathletics seems to have taken a leaf from swimming’s manual. Competitors are guaranteed automatic selection if they finish inside the standard and among the first three at next year’s British Championships – also the trial for the World Championships in London.

Yet this will be a huge ask. In every men’s and women’s event, athletics standards for Gold Coast are higher than in Glasgow, save in women’s sprint hurdles and sprint relay, where they remain the same. In 16 events (eight of each sex), the standard sought is superior to the existing Scottish native record. This will require athletes to travel abroad for optimum climatic conditions.

Unless Cameron Tindle’s meteoric rise continues, there is unlikely to be any male sprinter, given the 10.22 qualifying mark for the 100m and 20.80 for 200m.

Only five Scots have ever achieved the 100m time and six the 200m time.

Women’s sprinting appears even bleaker. Only one Scot, Helen Golden (11.40, at Crystal Palace in 1974) has ever been inside the Games 100m standard of 11.40. At 200m, Lee McConnell, in 2008, was the last to reach the required 23.30. It’s 23 years since the previous woman to make the grade, and only four have ever done so.

Jax Thoirs (pole vault) and Nick Percy (discus) already have outdoor national senior records awaiting ratification from this year’s efforts. But in the past 10 years in only two other Olympic events has the Scottish national men’s record been improved.

Laura Muir (1500m) and Lynsey Sharp (800m) were the only women to break records last year, but in the past 10 years seven other senior national records have fallen.

While encouraging, it does not match swimming’s progress. In the 18 individual events, records in all but four of the men’s events have been set inside the past 33 months.

Of the 18 women’s individual records, nine have fallen in the past 33 months, including three this week at Tollcross by Kathleen Dawson (pictured). Perhaps tougher standards which have worked for swimming will now have an impact on athletics. Or there will be a very small team, indeed, in

Gold Coast.