Let’s work together to ride Olympic wave - Scotsman comment

The Olympic motto was changed this year, “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”. The addition of the word “together” by the International Olympic Committee seems particularly pertinent today.

Fireworks explode during the closing ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics

The GB team has returned from the heat of Tokyo and the strangest Olympics ever with a 65-medal haul. It matches the number won in London in 2012 and is only two short of the Rio record from 2016. It is nothing short of incredible.

In an emotionally charged games, our athletes have fought through the disruption of Covid to turn in performances which have lifted the spirit of the watching public. They have inspired, entertained, and excelled.

And that is where ‘together’ comes in.

The Games have held many transfixed, will have reawakened passion for sport and perhaps sparked the interest of the next Laura Muir or Katie Archibald.

After a year and a half of the pandemic, where access to sporting facilities has been seriously restricted, children have found themselves locked up at home, and community sports clubs are pushed to the brink of extinction, it is vital that we capitalise now.

The Scottish Government has to take the lead here to ensure the whole country benefits, and gets active again, riding the wave of Olympic success together.

This will not happen automatically. All professional sporting success can be traced to grassroots clubs and the sterling work of volunteers; the very clubs which have had to endure two years of not being able to recruit new members during the Covid shutdown.

As the country opens up fully today with most of the remaining Covid restrictions lifted, the opportunity is there and waiting to be grasped.

The Scotsman has been campaigning with the Observatory for Sport in Scotland for a national conversation to enable all people and organisations with an interest in community sport to be heard. We want a national strategic forum and agreements to bring a more joined-up approach to delivering local activity for all ages and abilities.

Faster, Higher, Stronger – together we can do it.