No Country for Young Men

My goodness I miss athletics competitions. Today, on this Easter Monday, I should have been down in England with some Central AC athletes watching them set fire to the Fast 5K road race, but instead, I find myself in Stirling being served a nice cup of tea and biscuits by the Good Lady, as we spend quality time together pondering as to what to watch next; Homes under the Hammer, or Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr.

In the absence of competitions for the club athletes, and prizing myself from the best daytime TV on offer, I spent time this morning cajoling the foster daughter to try thrusting a javelin through our Victorian flat. The results were tremendous. As I trampled over the burst lath-and-plaster on the floor with my camera in one hand and measuring tape in the other, I recorded 2.7 metres covered. I am not ashamed to report to the reader that tears started to prick my eyes. 'What's that in your eyes Michael?' the javelin-wielding foster daughter quipped. 'It's nothing, it's nothing; get back to your javelin!'

Outwith the competitive pantheon of my Victorian hallway, and contrary to England, the remainder of Scotland remains stricken to the athletic wilderness with the staging of physical open athletic competitions being denied by command of the Scottish Government.

 

The wilderness

Unconstitutional

So perhaps we should all just resign ourselves to the current dearth of competition in Scotland? Well...when the Scottish Government have been found to have acted unlawfully in preventing religious worship, perhaps we, as an athletics community, should be more pro-active in pushing for a return of competition? Following a judicial review at the Court of Session in response to an action brought by 27 churches working together, Judge Lord Baird found the actions of the Scottish Government were unlawful in respect of church services and "disproportionately infringed" on the freedom of religious expressions. 

The result being that a worshipping community can now meet in their place of worship (an internal environment), with up to a fairly significant 50 persons in attendance. Perhaps the athletics community in Scotland, in a similar fashion, should work together so that athletes can compete in their sport in what is an outdoor environment?

 

 Open for business

No Country for Young Men

Matters reached a sad crescendo on this Easter weekend. In England, to the twittering adulation of the UK-wide athletics community, 5K races, on either track or road, were organised in Battersea, Barrowfield and Ashton-in-Makerfield. Athletes were welcomed with open arms, and entries were invited from athletes irrespective of standard. This was great, and myself and a gilded band of talented athletes had planned on travelling down to the Fast 5K on Easter Monday in a bid to validate all of the hard work done over a long dark winter.

All was well, until the point that the athletes were notified that, according to the criteria drafted by Sport Scotland, that they simply aren't good enough to travel. Sport Scotland read from a spreadsheet that says our athletes (most of whom are male sub-15mins 5K runners, and some of whom were chasing GB standards to compete at the forthcoming European Champs this summer) are insufficiently good enough to travel in a car, and at their own expense, compete in England against the best athetes in Britain. So on this Easter Monday, we didn't travel.

 

 

     Opportunity cost

 

This might not have been so bad had there been some physical competitions organised for April in Scotland, but there isn't. So we now find ourselves in an improbable position whereby the Scottish national agency for sport, will not permit athletes to travel to England to compete, and will not permit any athletic competitions to be hosted in Scotland by community athletic clubs....

Lath-and-Plaster

Like the lath-and-plaster which once secured and adorned the internal finishes of my flat, the provision of competition for athletes in Scotland lies impact damaged on the floor, whilst England sees races being hosted in every corner of their country.

The paternalistic Sport Scotland proclaim on their website that they "...understand the barriers people face and proactively address them so everyone has the opportunity to get involved in sport and physical activity". This government agency have now erected more barriers to athletics competition in Scotland than Trump erected on the southern US border to immigrants.

Young Scottish athletes now stand in an arid wilderness, pressed up against a border, peering across to a promised land where competition has resumed, where qualifying performances are being set, and wondering how on earth they can get there.

 

The Last Lap

The worst, regrettably, is saved for the last lap. When Central AC's Jamie Crowe, a 13:53mins 5,000m runner and the reigning Scottish Cross Country champion, is deemed to be insufficiently good enough by Scotland's government agency for sport, to drive himself to England to race the Podium 5K (a race where a British and World time was eclipsed), there is something tragic and pitiful in the support we are granting our best Scottish athletes at present.

Scotland is, seemingly, No Country for Young Men.

 

Michael Wright, Easter Monday, 2021