Assault trial date set for track star McColgan

LIZ McColgan, the Scottish athletics legend and former BBC Sports Personality of the Year, is to stand trial later this month charged with attacking her estranged husband and hurling his clothes out of the family home.

The Dundee-born track star made her second appearance at Arbroath Sheriff Court yesterday to deny charges of repeatedly punching husband, Peter, a former Northern Ireland steeplechaser, at their Victorian home near Carnoustie.

McColgan, 47, also denied causing fear and alarm during the alleged incident on 12 July by throwing out his clothes.

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McColgan, who had announced an “amicable” split from her husband last November, arrived at the courtroom in Arbroath’s High Street two minutes before the hearing began.

She was accompanied by a female friend who waved her arms in front of the former international athlete in a bid to foil waiting photographers.

During the hearing, she only spoke to confirm her name. Her solicitor, Ross Donnelly, told Sheriff Derek Pyle: “She maintains her plea of not guilty.”

She will stand trial on 21 November.

The first charge against McColgan is that she repeatedly punched her husband on the head and body and prodded him the body to his injury.

She is also accused of throwing her husband’s clothes down the stair and out of the window, and behaving in a threatening and abusive manner likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear and alarm.

The McColgans were married in 1987 and have five children. They announced their separation last November but had continued to live in the same house.

As Liz Lynch, McColgan became a household name when she won a gold medal in the 10,000 metres at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986. She then took silver for Great Britain over the same distance at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

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