Commonwealth Games: Why is it so special to be part of Team Scotland?

Eilish McColgan won one of 13 gold medals for Scotland at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham

There's the girl you know from your home town. The guy you went to university with. The fella who trains in the same gym as you every day. And your best pal and training partner is there, too.

None of you are having to speak slowly, to clip your Rs, or accentuate your vowels. You understand the patter, know what sqwerr sausage is, and can fluently punctuate by swearing.

It's like being among family and friends, with all the tender aggression and familiar hinterland that brings.

That is the atmosphere within Team Scotland, a diverse - yet similar - collection of athletes and staff who represent the country once every four years at the Commonwealth Games, and will do so again in Glasgow in 2026.

"There's just something about being Scottish - we all just get it and that identity really resonates with us," says swimmer and Olympic and Commonwealth Games veteran Ross Murdoch.

"It's a completely different dynamic to Team GB. Everyone's just… it's a breath of fresh air," adds Olympic silver and bronze-winning cyclist Jack Carlin.

"It's warmer and more intimate," says Commonwealth badminton medallist Kirsty Gilmour. "With GB, and you need to put your extrovert mask on and try to make new friends, but you just feel more at ease in Team Scotland."

'Something about it just feels different'

Those three athletes also compete for Britain and are at pains to make it clear that they enjoy, and even relish, doing so. But the Commonwealths are a rare chance to represent Scotland. Their country. Where they are from.

For most, the divergence is not political either. Instead it is something far less tangible. A feeling. That's why explaining it isn't easy, particular for people whose sporting talents are their primary means of expression.

Of the 25 or so athletes asked by BBC Scotland why it was special to represent Scotland, most immediately reached for the rarity of the opportunity.

In some sports, it only happens once every four years. For competitors such as Laura Muir, who missed out on the Gold Coast Games in 2018 because of her university exams, it has been even more scarce.

But there must be more to it than that? Not least because the Commonwealths lacks a little of the cachet of other events.

"Something just feels different when you're running for Scotland," says distance runner Eilish McColgan, who won a stunning gold medal in the Women's 10,000m in Birmingham in 2022. "It's like I'm representing my home town - Dundee - a little bit more.

"You're around people you've known since you were wee - the athletes you've grown up with, the coaches, the support staff. And when you were young, it wasn't about running for GB. It was about running for Scotland. So it just reminds you of home."

The feeling is rooted in childhood for Murdoch, too.

"Just putting on the Scotland kit brings me back to being a wee boy," he says. "I'm from a wee estate in the Vale of Leven, and I remember watching Scotland winning medals at the 2006 Commonwealths and that seemed as big as the world could get.

"From then on, that was all I wanted to do, so for this hobby of mine to get totally out of hand and me do this three times… I can't even put that into words."

Hammer thrower Mark Dry has - like Murdoch, Carlin, McColgan and Gilmour - been to Olympics and world championships and is "proud" to have represented Britain. But none of those occasions, while materially more illustrious, have made him feel "anything like competing for Scotland does".

"It means everything to me," he says. "Other championships, you're doing it for yourself, but at the Commonwealths, you're doing it for Scotland."

Boxer Reese Lynch, who made his Games debut in Birmingham, is of a similar mind. "Even when I'm competing for GB, I'm still representing Scotland," he says. "It's where I'm from and it's who I am."

'The stress level is lower, but the fun level is higher'

Swimmer Duncan Scott has won 13 Commonwealth medals for Scotland

The identity is one aspect of it, then. But the environment plays a part, too.

Being inside the Team GB machine at an Olympics can be a stifling, lonely and isolated experience. It is a very serious business, where everyone has "their game-face on", according to Gilmour.

Given these are athletes at the very pinnacle of their sport, that is perhaps how it should be. But it is also telling how many athletes will mention the atmosphere inside the Team Scotland camp as being something they crave every four years.

"For me, it's really good fun," says swimmer Duncan Scott.

That's not to say that the business of winning medals is taken lightly, though. "It's more of a fun rivalry," says one of Scotland's most decorated Games athletes, Para-cyclist Neil Fachie.

"You've got your British team-mates there, and the Australians seem to get up for it a bit more, but the stress level is slightly lower, and the fun's a bit higher."

"There's no pressure," adds wheelchair racer Sammi Kinghorn, who won five medals including one gold at the recent Paralympics. "There is such a spread of athletes and abilities and we are all so grateful to be there. If you win a medal, you come back to the village and everyone is so excited for you."

"It's what I'd call hype vibes," says Olympic shooter Seonaid McIntosh. "Because it's a smaller team than GB, we all know each other and want everyone else to have success. That's a really lovely culture and environment to be in."

'You can't choose where you're born, but you can choose where you live'

Perhaps the greatest testimony to that atmosphere is not from those who were born and raised in Scotland, but rather from those who choose to identify as Scots.

Take wrestler Christelle Lemofack. She competed for Cameroon at Glasgow 2014, but enjoyed the experience so much that she never went home. In Birmingham, she represented Scotland.

"I've made a life here and Scotland gave me that opportunity, so I feel like I have to give something back," she said before the last Games. "I've dreamed about this and now it's come true. I have to fight for my new flag."

Lemofack might not have the ginger hair that Olympic judoka Sarah Adlington boasts as part of her credentials to compete for Scotland, but elements of their stories are the same.

"You can't choose where you were born, but you can choose where you live and I've chosen to live my whole adult life in Scotland," says the 2014 Commonwealth gold medallist. "I feel Scottish, my coaches and team-mates are Scottish, and I wouldn't want to compete for anyone else."

This article was originally published on 27 July 2022.