Scotland's leading ladies

Published on Saturday 4 July 2009 19:29

THE performances were largely unspectacular at last month's European Team Championships but the quartet of Scottish athletes in the Great Britain team all had one thing in common. The fairer sex was at the fore with a Caledonian contingent comprising Lee McConnell, Eilidh Child, Alison Rodger and Laura Kenney, the former duo already with qualifying standards for August's world championships to their name.

Noticeable by their absence were their male counterparts. With the trials for Berlin taking place this coming weekend in Birmingham, there is the real possibility that the DNA of Team GB in Germany could be minus Scottish XY. While Child will be joined by six male compatriots at the European Under-23 Championships in a fortnight's time, there is no outstanding successor to the lineage of Liddell and Wells. Girl power, under the current order, rules supreme.

Add in the likes of Morag MacLarty, Susan Scott, Gemma Nicol and Claire Gibson – an impressive 800m victor at the Bislett Games in Norway on Friday – and the strength in depth is reinforced. By contrast, Allan Scott has failed to produce his hurdling best this term while steeplechaser Stephen Lisgo has a leap to make. Only Andy Lemoncello has sparkled this year but even the Fifer may pass on Berlin to maintain his progression towards a marathon debut next year.

It is a curious bias, but the battle of the sexes is a no-contest. Where once the talk was of losing teenage girls from the sport, the chief concern is now the paucity of male prospects, even in events where Scotland has historically shone. "I don't know if it's the way the coaches are working or just the way that society is changing things," admits former world finalist Piotr Haczek, who has been mentoring the country's sprinters. "When I first came here, there was a really strong group of under 17s. By the time they came to under-20 level, they'd disappeared and now at senior level, there is nothing coming through."

Among the leading males, only Nick Smith is presently in contention for a British relay spot. "It is really strange," says Smith, currently seeking lost form. "You need to have good training partners and with two or three of you pushing each other, it helps. You can push yourself mentally if you have the right attributes but a lot comes down to the coaching system there to bring an athlete through."

There are efforts in place to trim the gender gap, with other initiatives in the works. Last week, Scottish Athletics advertised for the newly-created post of head coach. All visionaries will be considered. Even with the eternal challenge of luring lads away from football, grassroots initiatives like the programme being implemented by former European champion Yvonne Murray in Lanarkshire might, eventually, restore equilibrium.

"The women are doing better than the men, definitely," Murray observes. "That might have something to do with the dominance of African competitors in the (men's] endurance events. I remember when Zola Budd first came in and I thought 'she's just fantastic'. I just tried to hang on to her coat tails but I saw that as a challenge. It's difficult to pinpoint what the problem is now. It's a different generation. We're quite fortunate that we've got the Children's Games coming to Lanarkshire to use to enthuse kids. They are there. It's just about getting them into the sport first. But it does take time for that to translate to an elite level."

Just don't hold your breath. Three Scots have been selected for the British squad for the upcoming European Under 20 Championships. Another hat-trick for the girls, courtesy of Jenny Tan, Beth Potter and Jo Moultrie. All middle-distance specialists, it is a return for the work of Scottish Athletics' running supremo Mike Johnston who has endeavoured to give the group as much experience of high-level competition as possible.

"But if you look down the age groups," he notes, "you see pockets of talent coming through together on both the boys and girls front, even if it's certainly the females who are doing more at the moment.

"I think there's one big factor in that is that there have been more positive roles models in recent years. Go back to Liz McColgan and Yvonne Murray from a Scottish perspective and more recently with Kelly Holmes and Paula Radcliffe. We talk a lot about losing girls when they hit university age but when they see someone else succeeding, it attracts them to stay. And if we get that on the male side, I think you'll see it evening up again."