Scotland wins medals in tug of war world championships
- Published
Ayrshire junior mixed team came fourth in the open clubs competition
Scottish tug of war clubs have won medals at the world championships in the Netherlands.
Ayrshire and Cornhill both brought teams to the games and an international team also took part.
Ayrshire junior women took gold on Thursday and Scotland's junior women brought home a silver medal in their weight class on Saturday.
A junior mixed team for Ayrshire narrowly missed out on a medal, coming fourth in the open clubs competition.
Tom Nelson, a coach and competitor with the Ayrshire Tug of War Club, told BBC Scotland's The Sunday Show about the traits that make a good competitor in the sport.
He said: "The character of the person to work hard, train hard and be willing to learn would be my main objectives if I was looking for someone to start tug of war.
"A lot of it is fitness. We've got competitors there that will range from 50kg and we've got competitors at up over 100kg.
"We've got age ranging from 14 all the way up to mid-50s so it's a wide ranging sport."
Ayrshire junior women won gold in the 480kg category at the tug of war world championships
The Scottish Tug Of War Association (STOWA) was founded in 1980 to develop the amateur code of tug of war in Scotland.
Until then there had been many tug of war competitions at Highland Games events, although they were all run under the professional code.
At first STOWA developed the outdoor side of the sport, encouraging teams from young farmers' events to participate.
It also focused on the development of trade teams.
This continued until 1985 when the organisational body started the indoor tug of war practise, which culminated in a bronze medal at the World Championships in the 1990s.
Ayrshire junior women's team preparing for their tug of war
Mr Nelson said these days the sport was "open to everyone".
He added: "The big change in tug of war in the last 10 years is we now do mixed, so that's generally four boys and four girls.
"That's a very, very popular part of the programme, and probably to be fair, of all the teams of all the competition that were there, it had the most teams put forward."