Commonwealth Games 2022: How Team Scotland has been tooled up for Birmingham

Many of Scotland's athletes received their kit at a team camp in June

There will be about 15,000 pieces of Team Scotland kit in Birmingham. Somewhere close to 13,000 pin badges, 5,000 temporary tattoos, 2,500 Saltires and 400 kilts.

Among that, there will be 64 sets of bowls, a couple of hundred bikes, assorted boxing gloves, hockey sticks, and rackets, as well as weights, wetsuits and wheelchairs.

Then there's the scatter cushions for the athletes' villages, branding for the headquarters in Birmingham, and 900 chocolate medals - with an accompanying 400m of ribbon - to be handed out as gifts to friends and family of athletes.

In total, there will be 261 of those competitors, and another 150-odd coaches and staff members, all of whom have to be safely deposited at their various bases at the right time and with the right stuff.

It's little wonder chef de mission Elinor Middlemiss exhales exhaustedly when asked how you even begin wrangling with such a logistical tumult.

"You start about four years out with a blank sheet of paper and it gets full pretty quickly," says the two-time Commonwealth badminton medallist.

Having been to five Games as an athlete - claiming bronze in 1998 and 2002 - and another handful as team staff, Middlemiss is familiar with many of the challenges but the complications seem to grow each time. This time, Covid has clouded the picture even further.

"For me the biggest challenge is being comfortable with uncertainty because of the pandemic," the 55-year-old says. "We have to deal with a huge amount of detailed information, with not much clarity at times, and still deliver what we have to. We just get it done, somehow, and that always amazes me."

Team Scotland chef de mission Elinor Middlemiss is a two-time Commonwealth Games medalist

Middlemiss was speaking at the Team Camp day at Celtic Park in June, where around 150 of the athletes were in attendance.

On the schedule were sessions on mental health, social media use, and the obligatory team and individual photo shoots. But the most-anticipated part of the day was the presentation of the athletes' kit late in the afternoon.

As the day unfolded, the athletes had to repeatedly walk back and forward through an area in which a couple of hundred branded Scotland suitcases stood in regimented rows, awaiting their new owners.

Some were bouncing off the walls at the prospect of the bounty that awaited. Others, who'd played the game before, disclosed mild nervousness about what they might end up wearing in front of the world.

"It's Nike this time, good gear, so we're going up in the world," said swimmer and team veteran Ross Murdoch. "And there are none of those iffy shirts from Glasgow 2014."

But before long, half-naked athletes, discarded polythene, and excited chatter took over, as vests, shorts, kilts and hoodies were wrenched from their wrappers and wrestled on to bodies. "Here, how do I get this kilt on..." yelped one anxious youngster, as other posed for selfies.

Whatever fitted was rammed back into the cases to be taken home. Whatever didn't was discarded and replenished from the piles of other sizes stacked high on tables. It was a scene of joyous bedlam.

"Getting everyone's sizes is tricky, not least when you don't know the team until so late," says Middlemiss. "I did have one male athlete asking for female shorts, which I thought was a bit strange… I think they were for his girlfriend, but he got them."

For Middlemiss, the day was a success. The next time she will see many of those excited faces is when they begin to arrive in dribs and drabs in Birmingham, with the first reaching their digs on Thursday.

Once they are all in situ, one part of her job will be done. Then she can begin to deal with whatever her latest logistical headache is.

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