IT was mud packs all round at Falkirk yesterday and the ruddy health of Scottish athletics was summed up by the winner of the women’s race at the Scottish Cross Country Championships in Callendar Park.
Morag MacLarty, who contested the 1500m at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, had just powered away from Olympian and defending champion Beth Potter to claim this title for the first time in a long career that has been punctuated too often by injuries.
However as she pondered her prospects she suggested that the evidence of the last six months is that it is now harder to get a Scotland vest than a GB Olympic one.
“It’s crazy,” said the 31-year-old. “I don’t know what event I’m going for because the 5K is absolutely stacked. It’s going to be harder to get into the Gold Coast (Commonwealth Games) 2018 team than it was to get in the 2016 Olympic team because all of them were Scots… Stef Twell, Eilish McColgan, Laura Whittle and then you’ve got Laura Muir who’s absolutely amazing and Beth might do the 5K, although she’s trying triathlon. It’s absolutely unreal, so I don’t know, I might try the steeplechase. You’ve got to go for whatever you can do.”
With the women running over 10K, the same distance as the men for the first time in what were brutally difficult underfoot conditions, MacLarty, clawed her way through the glaur in 38 mins 32 seconds, seven seconds clear of Victoria Park’s Potter who had taken a tumble on the first lap, but recovered to pip Lothian Running Club’s Sarah Inglis.
That set up MacLarty’s club Central Athletics, for a double in the seniors’ team events, their men winning for a remarkable seventh successive time in spite of the absence of Andrew Butchart, who was on site, but only as a spectator roaring his training partners to their collective victory.
None of them was ever likely to be a match individually, however, for Butchart’s fellow Olympian Callum Hawkins who looked as comfortable as anyone could in matching his brother Derek by winning the men’s seniors race for a second time, the Kilbarchan man finishing in 33 minutes 34 seconds, close to half a minute clear of runner-up Kristian Jones of Dundee Hawkhill Harriers.
He admitted that conditions were such yesterday that he had made a late call on whether to run.
“I didn’t really decide until 10 o’clock this morning,” said Hawkins, who noted that he had claimed his first major win as a junior at Callendar Park. “If it was going to be minging weather it would probably have taken too much out of me… but it was a good tune up.
“Not to sound arrogant, but you can’t race all the time when you’re at the top end. You don’t want to tire yourself out and miss important training, but it was good to be back here basically where it all started for me.
“I wasn’t looking to lead it for as long, I was hoping to sit in a bit, but it was a bit slow at the start so I just went for a run out to see what happens, to see if I could hold on.”
He had mixed feelings, too, about Butchart’s decision not to run.
“I don’t know if I quite wanted that… a full run out, but I’m quite sure he’ll be quite happy he didn’t run,” he grinned. “It would have been nice to see him out and we could butt heads, but maybe another time.”
The athletes were not the only people who had been confronted with something of a dilemma on the day, Scottish Athletics chief executive Mark Munro having been called to the venue earlier than he intended to be there as his officials agonised over whether the course was unfit for competition due to high winds.
“I had a call from my events manager when I got into my car this morning who said we had a decision to make,” he said. “To his credit he made the decision on the spot and it has been proved correct.”
They had been aware as they were making it of serious implications, not least for clubs who had travelled from the Scottish islands to take part, but were fully rewarded for holding their nerve with what were vastly improved overhead conditions by the time the main senior events took place in mid-afternoon and an excellent day’s competition, contested by a record field.
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