Muir, Doyle, Archibald, Carlin, Higgins, Taylor, Murray, Anderson: Scots shine on world stage
- Published
GB's Muir wins thrilling 1,500m silver
When Laura Muir landed her first global medal on the track at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham on Thursday, it wasn't just her running that impressed. It was her moral fibre, too.
Muir has put herself through a tough regime, juggling the intensity of studying for her final veterinary exams while trying to stay competitive in the rarefied air of the athletics elite.
The Ethiopian, Genzebe Dibaba, won gold in that 3,000m race on Thursday, as she was expected to. Dibaba is a multiple world champion and currently holds eight different world records, the most held simultaneously by any athlete in the history of the sport.
There is a problem though. Dibaba is coached by Jama Aden, a deeply controversial individual, a man who was arrested in Spain in 2016 after the banned drug, erythropoietin, was found in the room of one of his physios. Aden remains on bail but denies any doping offences and Dibaba continues to stand by him.
The Scot has an issue with that. Dibaba has never failed a drugs test, but Muir doesn't speak to her and doesn't champion her success.
Muir's bronze was the first notable Scottish sporting success story in a wonderful four-day stretch last week. She followed it up on Saturday with a second global medal when getting silver in the 1,500m, Dibaba finishing ahead of her once more.
The same night, Eilidh Doyle, giving eight and nine years to the young American athletes ahead of her in the 400m final, took bronze. At the age of 31, and having fielded questions at the turn of the year about when she was going to retire, Doyle took her first individual medal on the world stage.
World Track Cycling: GB's Katie Archibald, right, & Emily Nelson win madison gold
Zoey Clark added to the medal haul by taking bronze as part of the 4x400m relay after Jamaica were disqualified.
Of course, football is king in this country. Always was and always will be. No sport has the capacity to move the national spirit the way football can. The game matters to more people than any other.
In correctly disallowing a Motherwell goal in the Scottish Cup quarter-final on Sunday, Andrew Dallas probably generated more online comment than Muir had done the night before when finishing second to the fastest women's 1,500m runner in history. That's the reality.
Outside of the football bubble, what great stories there were in the four days.
On Saturday, the redoubtable Katie Archibald won gold in the Track World Championships in Netherlands. That's Archibald's third world gold to go with her Olympic medal.
On the same day, an unheralded 20-year-old sprint cyclist from Paisley took silver. Jack Carlin wasn't supposed to be mapped. Not even Chris Hoy, with all the knowledge on the planet, expected it.
Carlin took down Maximilian Levy to get himself into the gold medal round. Levy has three Olympic medals and four world championship golds. "Quite unbelievable. I'm blown away," said Hoy of Carlin's emergence.
Later on that Saturday night, we saw the return of Josh Taylor to the ring. Taylor versus Winston Campos was a mismatch, but that's hardly Taylor's fault.
His original opponent withdrew. Campos was the best his management could find, but his best wasn't good enough to get him through three rounds.
GB's Jack Carlin wins silver in men's sprint
Taylor is a class act. He can give a punch and take a punch, he has speed and ring craft. Barry McGuigan, his manager, says that he's one fight away from a world championship bid, which may come by the end of the summer.
The way that boxing people, like McGuigan and Alex Arthur, talk about Taylor convinces you that he's going right to the top. This is one seriously talented kid.
On Sunday, more Scots stood up in their own worlds. Jamie Murray won his 20th career doubles title in Mexico. Murray and Bruno Soares beat the American legends, Bob and Mike Bryan.
With more titles than anybody else in the history of doubles tennis, the Bryans are the most successful doubles pair of all-time. They're no spring chickens, but they remain third in the world. Murray and Soares are now up to fourth.
John Higgins won a record fifth Welsh Open on Sunday. It was the 30th ranking event of his career, including his four world titles, and it puts him just two behind Ronnie O'Sullivan and six behind Stephen Hendry in snooker's trophy pantheon.
On his way to the title at the weekend, Higgins took out O'Sullivan 5-1. The Scot is such a humble character that he downplayed the victory over the most naturally talented player the game has ever seen.
In a sport that is increasingly populated by fearless young lions, Higgins, at 42, is still a formidable presence. The world championships are approaching. An incredible fifth world crown is not beyond him.
Gary Anderson is five years older than Higgins and also operates in a world where the age profile of his rivals is getting younger and younger. Anderson is, of course, a double world champion, but he hadn't won a major television event in two years. That changed on Sunday when he took the UK Open.
Winston Campos was stopped by Josh Taylor at Glasgow Hydro
All the heavy hitters were there - world number one Michael van Gerwen, world champion Rob Cross, reigning UK champion Peter Wright, five-time world champion Raymond van Barneveld. Anderson beat Cross in the last eight and defeated another one of those emerging stars, Australia's Corey Cadby, in the final.
Anderson was modest in the aftermath, praising Cadby rather than praising himself. "He's going to be about for a long, long time," said Anderson of his young opponent.
In the match, he showed his quality. In the post-match, he showed his class in a different way.
In Zimbabwe, the Scotland cricket team created a surprise when beating Afghanistan in an ICC Cricket World Cup qualifier. The Scots got their campaign off to a flier with a seven-wicket win, inspired by Calum MacLeod, who was unbeaten on 157 off 146 balls.
What MacLeod did was special given that, for 31 balls of his innings, he was up against Rashid Khan, currently the world's leading one-day international bowler. MacLeod took Khan for 49 runs and gave him one of his worst days in cricket.
Football dominated the media, and social media, and that's always going to be the case, but we saw a lot of Scottish achievers in a lot of different sports these past few days. Athletics and cycling, boxing and snooker, darts and tennis and cricket.
The previous Saturday, the Scottish rugby team beat England, the second best side in global rugby and second-favourites to win the World Cup next year.
World champions, giant-killers and exciting tyros. There's much to admire out there.