THERE was a subtle but significant change of emphasis and tone in the speech made by First Minister Alex Salmond during Friday's reception to honour Scotland's Olympians.
Rather than repeat his call for an independent Scottish team, he said something that suggested he had listened to Chris Hoy, by stating his wish that more Scottish athletes have the opportunity to train in Scotland.
Mike Whittingham, executive di
rector of the Scottish Institute of Sport, has been calling for some time to have more national centres, or centres of excellence, based north of the Border. It was during the recent Olympics that swimming made a positive step towards realising Whittingham's – and Salmond's – vision.
Stirling has been designated by British Swimming as one of five Intensive Training Centres, and will receive significant investment from the governing body as it attempts to find the next Rebecca Adlingtons. ITC status will provide, say Scottish Swimming, "a world class environment for swimmers and coaches, focused ultimately on medal success at the Olympics."
The ITC entails an initial four-year contract, with the aim to maintain the programme through to 2017."
Ashley Howard, chief executive of Scottish Swimming, says this is the first stage in "a larger vision to support the growth of four performance centres in Scotland," with Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen the other Scottish cities.
Whittingham, who was in Beijing, wants to attract more such centres to Scotland, but not at the expense of already well-performing British ones.
"There are winning formulas in certain sports," he says, "and clearly if we can get Scots into the sailing, rowing or cycling programmes then we know they're in very good hands and are likely to medal."
There would be little point, he is saying, in trying to replicate such programmes up here. But in other sports, "there might be opportunities."
Judo could be a target. "With judo, it's great that we got people to the Olympics, but they under-performed and we've got to find out why. We have great resources here, in terms of coaches and the facility at Ratho."
Whittingham was encouraged by the First Minister's words. "I was delighted to hear that the First Minister believes that a major priority for his government is to ensure that more Scottish athletes have the opportunity to train on home soil. He said he had pledged 'good money' to sportscotland to invest in facilities to make that happen. It's exactly what we need."
Chinese imports could be a successful racketONE initiative Whittingham is working on, post-Beijing, is an imaginative collaboration with China. It would be designed, he says, to help the country's badminton players prepare for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014.
"China are not in the Commonwealth," says Whittingham, "but I think we can build a good partnership with China that would help us in 2014. It might involve bringing in some top level sparring partners," he explains. "These things take a while to set up, but we need to look at a number of different ways of doing things...there's still a big gap between where we are and where we want to be." Flying in some Chinese badminton players might indeed be an inspired scheme, but Whittingham doesn't think it should stop there.
"The principle could apply to any sport. London is big, but Glasgow is huge for us."
McWilliam's inspirationANOTHER Scot who was in Beijing, but not to compete, was triathlete Kirsty McWilliam, selected by the BOA as a 2012 hopeful and taken along to sample the Olympic experience under the mentorship of Denise Lewis. "I think just to see the athletes' village made it worthwhile," she says. "I'm so glad I've seen it. It's immense, and it would be so easy to be intimidated. It's on such a big scale; the food hall is massive. I was wandering around scraping my jaw off the floor."
As a result, McWilliam is more inspired than ever for 2012. "It gives me something to get through the winter."
The full article contains 678 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
