Scotland men’s sevens captain Jamie Farndale has travelled the world with his team. But the highlight of his globetrotting year will be taking part in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham – and not just for the rugby.
Farndale, who believes his Scotland team can medal, is on the Birmingham 2022 sustainability team, as well as serving as a sustainability ambassador for Scottish Rugby and Team Scotland. When he talks about making these Games the most sustainable ever, then, he’s not just expressing some vague hope.
The 28-year-old knows as much about sustainability as he does about rugby and has an impressive CV in both. As well as having a first-class Honours degree in business management, which included a module on business sustainability, from Napier University in Edinburgh, he has started a Masters degree on the subject at Cambridge University.
When we meet in an Edinburgh café he puts me to shame by turning up with his own reusable cup while I order my coffee in a paper one to take out in case I don’t finish it.
“I will take my own reusable cup to the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and fill it up from the water fountains there and also use it in coffee shops,” said the skipper. “It will be with me all the time. It is a simple thing to do but something that can make a big difference. I am hoping as many people as possible, those taking part in the games and those attending, do the same in Birmingham.”
Talking about rugby first, he believes that his Scotland team go into the tournament in great shape after competing in the HSBC World Rugby Sevens series which includes such venues as Dubai, Singapore, Vancouver, Los Angeles, London and Toulouse.
“We were then given three weeks’ break but since we have come back together again it has been all systems go for Birmingham,” said Farndale, whose team carried out their Commonwealth Games training at the indoor sporting facility at Ravenscraig near Motherwell.
“We are ready to go and feel we can medal – and want to inspire a nation by the way we play. Sevens, in the hierarchy of rugby, gets overlooked. It is a sport I love and I know, when fans come and watch it, they love it too.
“The Commonwealth Games is a platform where we can showcase sevens and the Scotland team. Whatever we can do to make people love Scotland sevens is what we want to do. We will be going to Birmingham to try and win but, whatever happens, we will be playing with pride and panache – and we will all be proud to represent our country.”
Farndale loved playing sevens in the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in Australia and the experience he gained there is part of the reason he is so bullish about Scotland’s chances this time round.
“It was fantastic time for us all in Australia and, although we didn’t medal, I am expecting a similar great experience in Birmingham, where I think we can make the podium,” said the man who played in the Commonwealth Youth games in the Isle of Man at the age of 17.
“We are lucky to travel the world as a Scotland sevens team, but the Commonwealth Games is something very, very special where we stay alongside and meet others from different sports.
“I felt part of something really big, being part of Team Scotland on the Gold Coast and I am looking forward to enjoying the experience and being part of the Commonwealth Games team once again. There are a few of us who were in the Gold Coast sevens tournament who are in the squad for Birmingham so know what to expect and we can pass on our knowledge to the younger players in the squad. We will all be inspired by having the honour of representing Scotland, which is one of the reasons I think we will do well.”
Looking at the other countries involved, he singles out Olympic champions Fiji and South Africa as the two favourites for the gold medal.
“South Africa are always consistent while Fiji are the traditional sevens powerhouse,” he said. “What encourages us as a Scotland team is that we played all the top teams in the HSBC world sevens series and have run them all within a few points. The fact we pushed them so close in the past gives me even more confidence that it is going to click for us in the Commonwealth Games.
“We can do well and, as a captain, I will be encouraging everybody to take a role in leadership on the pitch. Physically and emotionally, when you are playing six games in a weekend you are absolutely shattered. You can go from being on a low if you lose one to having to get up again for a game two hours later.
“It is an emotional rollercoaster and dealing with that is something I am used to, having being involved in the Scotland sevens set up since 2015, and is something all the players have to deal with, especially in the Commonwealth Games where medals are at stake.”
As well as helping Scotland to a medal, Farndale’s desire is to make sure everybody involved in the sevens set-up plays their part in creating a carbon-neutral legacy at these Games.
“What people forget is the reach sports has,” he said. “If sports people and sports organisations speak about important issues and do the right things like highlighting the need for sustainability then they can help make a difference. I am passionate about the business side of sustainability and, by that, I mean staging events that make a profit but also have a positive impact on people and the planet.
“The social ocial benefits that come from sport are very obvious. Health and wellbeing, gender equality, inclusivity, getting homeless people playing sport, getting refugees paying sport, there are a lot of good things that comes with sport.
“There is also the sustainability strategy side, which includes things like preferred transport options like using electric buses, planting trees to create a lasting legacy and making sure you don’t use excess plastic at the games.
“A good example is being set in the world sevens series in Vancouver when they are trying to reduce waste. When the tournament starts every player is given a water bottle and, in the hotel, there is a refillable fountain.
“At the ground there are refillable fountains and no plastic bottles, while in other places you go there are thousands of them. It makes environmental and economic sense to reduce the numbers of plastic bottles and organisers are also saving money.”
And with that Farndale picks up his reusable cup and heads back to join his Scotland sevens team at their training camp.
“See you in Birmingham,’ he said. “And remember to bring your reusable cup and make sure everybody else brings one too. We want to make this is the most sustainable Commonwealth Games ever – as well as making sure Scotland win a sevens medal.”
Article by Rob Robertson
Glasgow 2014 judo gold medallist Kimberley Renicks is set to compete at her second Commonwealth Games at Birmingham 2022.
The announcement was made today as the Team prepares for their final training camp ahead of next week’s opening ceremony.
Kimberley heads into the Games on a high following a gold medal win at the Winterthur Senior European Cup last weekend, where fellow Team Scotland teammates Malin Wilson, Rachel Tytler and Sarah Adlington also medalled.
Commenting on her selection, Kimberley said, “I am excited because it is my second Games, and I will be fighting at a different weight so it will be a different experience from Glasgow 2014. It was difficult through the Covid period, and I knew that fighting a weight above I would be up against two other athletes during qualification. I am happy to have been selected and I will try and go out with a bang.”
Kimberley will join a team of 11 Judoka representing Team Scotland following the withdrawal of Hannah Wood from the Games due to injury.
Finding the right work/life balance is an equation everyone dreams of solving.
Having to shoehorn in a commitment to elite sport on either side of that slash, though? It’s a scale that doesn’t balance, a litre trying to squeeze into a pint glass.
So spare a thought for those Team Scotland athletes who aren’t full-time in their sport. Who aren’t funded. Whose every waking hour is spent trying to bend the space/time continuum to get more than 24 hours into a day and more than seven days into a week.
That’s the conundrum facing both Colin Dalgleish and Rebecca Plaistow as they prepare for the table tennis event in Birmingham.
Along with 16-time national champ Gavin Rumgay and Scotland No2 Lucy Elliott, they form a truncated four-player outfit who’ll appear in the singles and doubles, but not the team event.
But Colin, 27 – a veteran of the Gold Coast Games in 2018 – and Rebecca, 22, are both in the throes of trying to make a big impression in their chosen professions, both in their first jobs since graduating, one with a wedding looming in weeks, the other having moved home to a new city in January.
And yet both are desperate to be at the peak of their powers to face world-class opponents in a matter of weeks.
“It’s a juggling act,” admitted Colin. “I work for Sky in Livingston on their graduate accountancy programme, so I’m in the middle of doing my professional exams. They’ve been a brilliant support to me in terms of time off for events, but balancing the studying, the job and training isn’t easy.
“I’ve also got a June wedding with my fiancee Caitlin, we just picked up the keys to a new house, yet I’m trying to put in three or four nights a week on the TT as a bare minimum for where I want my game to be.”
Rebecca has similar issues. A recent graduate of Glasgow Caley Uni, she uprooted from her Ayrshire home in January to take on a job in Newcastle as a dietician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary.
As with all NHS Trusts at the moment, she finds herself in an understaffed and overworked environment, and she admitted: “There are nights I get home where I’m too tired to face training or the gym, they’re long days at work, on your feet, around the wards.
“From a training point of view, I’ve been lucky to find a club at the Uni right next to where I work and the standard is really good. There’s a guy called Graeme Barella coaching there, who’s top 20 in England and used to play in the Scottish National League.
“So that’s been a help – but now they’re shut for the exams so I’m having to factor in getting home on weekends, or up to Edinburgh, to get some practice in.”
As an indoor pursuit, table tennis was among the worst affected by the pandemic, forcing even the best of the best into an almost complete hibernation.
“It couldn’t have come at a worse time for me,” sighed Colin.
“Going to the Commies in 2018 had been massive for me. I’d gone to Germany with our No. 2 Craig Howieson for 10 days before it and it was a great camp, best centre in Europe, training with their national team guys, and it got us in the best shape possible.
“Then the Gold Coast experience was amazing. Our first night we played Australia on the show court in front of a home crowd. Playing Malaysia was brilliant as well.
“These events are so valuable but, when they only come every four years, you have to take everything you can from them.
“I came back and felt like I really kicked on, I beat Gavin Rumgay in the final to win my first nationals, I was playing the best TT of my life at the time, I’d just graduated and was thinking about taking some time to go and play some pro tour events – and we went into lockdown a week later!
“We all thought it would be a few weeks, but the longer it went the more you realised what the consequences were. We had literally no access to the sport.
“I kept really fit, I did a huge running challenge with friends in the April, May and June I was going HIIT sessions every day, I was in great shape – but I couldn’t get a bat in my hand.
“I don’t think I trained properly between March 2020 and our first camp back at Inverclyde at the end of July 2021.”
Having lost both national finals since returning to the indomitable Rumgay, Dalgleish now feels he’s finally returning to where he was pre-Covid, a perception borne out by his recent win over Welsh legend Ryan Jenkins for the North Ayrshire side he led to an impressive second place.
“The Games are a step up again, though,” he cautioned. “We’re playing against full time athletes, and it’s doubly hard because our opponents will almost all have played in the team event when they get to the singles and doubles – and we’ll be coming in cold.
“There’s no margin for error so you need to peak for day one.”
Plaistow, meanwhile, has been accumulating more experience of her own, leading the Scotland side in the European League in Sarajevo and can’t wait to savour her first major Games.
“It was frustrating that we didn’t send a women’s team to Gold Coast,” Rebecca admitted. “I’d seen the women’s team from Wales and England get announced, and then our men’s team, so it was quite disheartening when we didn’t send.
“I actually went as a spectator in 2014 in Glasgow when I was only 14, but I had already beaten one of the girls in that team even then – so I’d always hoped I’d get the chance.
“Then, when we were up getting fitted for the uniforms in Stirling a few weeks ago, walking the corridors and looking at the pictures of all the top athletes on the walls, it all felt pretty special to be part of it.
“I don’t really know anyone else in Team Scotland. Jemma Reekie, who’s obviously a world class athlete, came from just up the road from me in Kilbarchan, so I’m looking forward to seeing her and hopefully learning a lot from everyone else.
“And, although we’re not in the team event, I’ll still be going down early to get some practice in – and for the opening ceremony. I don’t want to miss a minute of the experience.”
She never thought much of it at the time, but the formative years of Kara Hanlon’s swimming career were very different from most of her international peers. Despite the physical restrictions of training at a venue that is half the distance of a short course pool and a quarter of a long course lap, she has gone to great lengths to make sure she would be representing Team Scotland at the Commonwealth Games.
“Yeah, this is going to sound weird but my coach was really inventive and we would try a lot of different things,” explains the 100m British breaststroke champion and Team Scotland Commonwealth Games medal hopeful as she recalls those early days.
“We would do a lot of work with bungee cords that were attached to one end of the pool and you would have to swim against it.
“My coach [DR Morrison] would have a rope line and if your feet went back past that rope line you would have to start again. Sometimes it would be 15-second sprints, sometimes it was a minute. That stuff was hard!”
But, growing up on the Isle of Lewis, where the pool she trained in was just 12.5m, compared to the 25m or even 50m most swimmers on the mainland use to clock up the distances needed to reach the top, creativity was instrumental in getting her where she wanted to be.
“Because it was a 12.5m pool, he would also hang a rope over the pool cover, which was about a metre from the wall, and you would swim from one end round the rope to the other end and that would be about 25m and for 50m you would come back up around the rope the other way.
It was weird getting used to that but it really helped me. I had to work to maintain stroke rate and be able to maintain my speed, as you have to slow down getting round that rope then speed up again. It seems crazy now thinking about it – but it obviously really worked for me.”
Making the drive from Stornoway to Ness four times a week, by the time she was 17 Hanlon had shown sufficient promise and delivered consistently enough at regional and national school and age group level to earn some special treatment.
She revealed: “I didn’t really do morning training until I was about 16. The pool in Stornoway, which is a 25m pool, didn’t open until 8 am and, with school starting at 8.45 am, there wasn’t time for a session. So until I was 16, I wasn’t even getting up for morning training, which the kids on the mainland had been doing for years.”
Things changed when she joined the Scottish Institute of Sport’s local performance development programme in 2013 and then, a year later, aged 17, she was inducted into the Scottish Swimming Gold squad and became a full SportScotland Institute of Sport athlete.
“As well as helping with the likes of gym training, they decided to support me by opening the pool earlier in the morning for me. I think it started off as two mornings but gradually went up to four. They would open it at seven so I could get a good hour and a half in the pool before school. That really helped me get those extra metres in. It still wasn’t loads but it was what I needed at the time. It was tiring, though, because I wasn’t used to it. I remember being in school and thinking: ‘I’m going to fall asleep.’”
There have been more moments like that since, as she combined university studies with her sport and moved to Edinburgh.
Used to doing around 20km a week in the pool, she suddenly moved up to doing 50km, saying of the increased workload: “I just remember being dead all the time. My shoulders were wrecked – and it was just too much.”
The Edinburgh University athlete’s times suffered and, for someone used to seeing the rewards of her labours, it was tough.
There have been a couple of switches in coaches, but Hanlon is back on an upward trajectory.
And, having missed out on the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and then, agonisingly, Gold Coast 2018, she was determined to make the plunge in Birmingham this summer.
“I missed out on the 2018 Commonwealth Games by 0.04 of a second, which was crushing’” she said, adding: “I had previously missed the 2014 team by one person too! To miss out twice like that was tough, but it motivated me more than anything. I tried to go back to a feeling of no pressure, just swimming, and letting faster times come. I’m swimming because I love it, and I really enjoy it. I swim best that way.”
The proof is there. The Scottish national short course and long course champion in 50m, 100m and 200m Breaststroke, she also took gold over 100m and bronze in both 50 and 200m at the British Championships at Sheffield this April, beating Olympian Sarah Vasey and bolstering the belief that she could be a Commonwealth contender.
“My coach and I sat down at the beginning of the season and the first goal was to make the team, which I’ve done, and then the second was to challenge for a medal. I would love to do that. First, I have to make the finals. I want to really be in with a chance for a medal.”
There is stiff competition, though. When she won that British title, just 11 hundredths of a second separated the top three and, in Birmingham, she will also have to contend with the Australians and South Africans.
“The field is pretty stacked so I think it will take some PB times to put myself up there in the ranks – but I think I have put myself in a good position to be able to do that,” she insisted.
The only female breaststroker in the team, Hanlon is expecting to swim the 50m, 100m and 200m, as well as the 4x100m medley. She may also be needed in the mixed relay, although that is still to be determined.
“It will be a busy schedule over the six days but that is really exciting.”
Especially as swimming will, once again, have the chance to set the tone for the rest of Team Scotland.
“Over the years I have maybe put too much pressure on myself, and I have had to learn not to do that,” said Hanlon. “Now I stay as relaxed as possible. I’ve learned to believe in the training I have been doing and trust that it will all come together on the day.”
Article by Moira Gordon
There may be a poorly poodle or an arthritic tortoise still wondering if Neah Evans is ever going to come back to see them. It doesn’t look likely now.
Evans was working as a veterinary surgeon and cycling primarily for fun in 2017 when she decided to take a brief sabbatical from her job to focus on putting everything into her maiden Commonwealth Games appearance the following year.
Things went so well for the Aberdeenshire-based cyclist on Gold Coast, however, that she is yet to return to her vocation.
Evans concedes that she had fairly low expectations when she was first given the opportunity to ride for Team Scotland, believing she was well short of the level required to be an elite athlete.
Her performances in Australia, however, proved to be life changing as she earned a silver in the scratch race and a bronze in the points race. That gave her the confidence to truly believe she could make a success of cycling – and she returns for her second Games as an Olympic medallist and one of Britain’s leading riders.
The 31 year-old said: “Going to Gold Coast was definitely a turning point for me in my career. When I first started cycling it was just a bit of fun.
“Then I got on the Scottish Cycling programme and, at that point, it was about trying to see if they can either get you onto the British Cycling programme or to the Commonwealth Games. For me as an older athlete, it was very much focused on trying to get to the Games.
“It seemed so far off as I started so far down the pecking order. But that was my aspiration, and I was just working towards it and then I got picked up by British Cycling. That was never how I had expected to get to the Games, through British Cycling. Suddenly there was a different pressure.
“Before I would have been happy going to Gold Coast and thinking that was going to be the highlight of my career just to be there. Then, all of a sudden, I was thinking about whether it might be possible to medal. And I came away with two. I had known I was physically capable of that but to actually achieve it? I had zero expectations on that front. So that was huge.
“I thought I was probably going to take a year out from being a vet to do Commie Games. That was the initial process behind it. And five years later I’ve not gone back.
“I just thought I would take a year out from working to give myself the best possibility to succeed. I was getting funded through British Cycling but I was still so far away from being an elite-level athlete. I was so clueless! It’s only now, looking back, that I realise how little I knew, even at that stage.
“But winning those medals became the moment when I realised that I wasn’t just trying to get to the Commonwealth Games any more. It was: ‘What’s next? What can the future hold?’ And I started to wonder if the Olympics might be a possibility for me.
“So Gold Coast was a pivotal point in my career. It was this moment where I started to think: ‘Right, what else can I do?’ And that was pretty cool.”
Evans had been involved in cycling World Cups prior to 2018 but the multi-sport experience of a Commonwealth Games was a whole new thing entirely.
She added: “Before Gold Coast I went to the kitting out. And I suddenly realised that the room was filled with other athletes and it wasn’t just cyclists. It was huge and you could see it meant so much to so many people. And everyone had different aspirations.
“We went to Sydney for a cycling holding camp. It was quite big with all the Scottish cyclists together and the first time I had been riding for Scotland alongside so many others. That was quite fun. For the track events we were in an AirBnB so in our own little bubble and it just felt like a bigger World Cup. Not that strange compared to what I’d done previously.
“And then everything completely changed. I went into the athletes’ village and just went: ‘Oh wow!’ It went from being in that bubble where you kind of knew everybody to this environment where you were just one of thousands. And that felt very weird. It was almost too much to take in.
“One of the other fun things to do was to sit in the dining hall – which is huge with so much food – and try to guess what sport some of the others in the room were doing! You had every shape and size of athlete imaginable. And the one common factor was they were really good at their chosen sport.”
Evans returns for her second Commonwealth Games appearance a far more confident cyclist than the one who tentatively travelled to Gold Coast four year ago. And this time only gold will suffice.
“My approach now has been looking to see how I can come into these Games giving myself the best chance to go one step higher on the podium than I managed the last time,” she declared.
“That, in itself, is a big ask. There are a lot of uncertainties in track racing and it can be such a chaotic event. So it will be tough – but that’s a major target for me this year.
“The track is down in London rather than Birmingham so it’s going to be a very different Commonwealth Games experience. We won’t be in the bubble. But hopefully that might work quite well as we could get people in London who might not have travelled to Birmingham – but who could be enticed out to watch an event on their doorsteps. So I’m hopeful there will be a good atmosphere and a noisy crowd. That’s something we’ve all missed over the last couple of years.”
Article by Graeme Macpherson
A HERO’S job, they call it. To inspire the next generation of Team Scotland stars. Fraser Malcolm lives and breathes its toil, night and day. An international basketballer, with a knowledge of the importance that role models can play. And a teacher too, his vocation driving him to sculpt young minds and steer them towards a life well-lived, a cup filled to the brim with possibilities.
This dual purpose, he well knows, comes with responsibilities attached.
“I think it’s huge,” the Glasgow Rocks forward, whose mornings are spent teaching at Gryffe High in Renfrewshire, explained. “And obviously it’s come on over the last two years with having lockdowns, delayed Olympics, and sporting events cancelled and all that type of stuff.
“It’s more important now than ever to have positive sporting role models in young people’s lives. Covid recovery, everyone says, is really just emphasising sport and showcasing it within the country.
“And I think having the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, where there isn’t the time difference that we had in Australia in 2018, will mean more people are able to watch. It’s going to be great for the next generation of athletes.”
Malcolm, now 26, was once one of those aspiring, wide-eyed hopefuls as a prodigy at his local club, Falkirk Fury, watching its graduates head to the 2006 Games in Melbourne and its stellar pupil, Kieron Achara, eventually take the stage at the London 2012 Olympics.
Almost a generation apart, he would join his boyhood idol in Gold Coast four years ago, returning from college in the United States to form part of a Scotland men’s team that fulfilled its own ambitions by finishing fourth behind the global powers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand while relishing the treat of knocking England off en route.
“The best experience I’ve ever had,” Malcolm insisted. “It was kind of a goal that I set when I was younger. And when we talk about goal-setting in class, I’ll maybe talk about it, using myself to give an example whenever we’re talking about long-range goals, or specific goals, or manageable goals.
“I set that one a long time before I went to Australia. And I will speak about it very positively.”
Scotland’s run to within touching distance of a podium finish four years ago was conducted in the traditional five-on-five version of a sport invented in 1891 – by the son of emigrants from Angus. Birmingham 2022 has opted to include the newer 3×3 variant of basketball that has emerged from the playgrounds to earn itself a global circuit and Olympic status.
Scotland’s men and women – plus the women’s wheelchair squad – all secured their berths in the springtime on home turf in Largs. For Malcolm, it brought a rapid learning curve. Quicker action, adapted rules, a single basket – and rosters of four, not 12.
“This game is fast paced,” he said. “It’s really an offensive game. It’s more physical and enjoyable to play. Watching back the qualification tournament, it was enjoyable to watch as well just because there is so much scoring and there aren’t a lot of time-outs. And there are no real breaks in play.”
Breaking into a laugh, Malcom added: “So there’s nowhere to hide!
“There’s no such thing as a deep team. Everyone’s going to play, everyone’s going to have to contribute to winning. We’re not too sure how we compare to other teams. But if we go in and if we shoot the ball well and if we defend well, then I feel like we’ve got a good chance.”
Ditto for the women, with a home-based contingent drawn from Women’s British Basketball League side, Caledonia Pride, but with a golden nugget in the shape of Kennedy Leonard, Colorado-born but with a Dundonian mother, who led London Lions to a clean sweep of all four domestic trophies last season – without suffering a single loss along the way.
As a sign of just how ambitious the Scottish women are, consider Leonard’s blunt declaration of intent, as she insisted: “It wasn’t really enough to qualify for the Commonwealths. We want to go there and pick up a medal. We want to go there and win.”
That goes for their male counterparts too, Malcolm affirms. But there is a motivation on top. Gareth Murray, set to make a little history as the first basketballer to feature at three Commonwealth Games, is expected to retire following his stint as player-coach in Birmingham.
“We don’t know his plans are for sure,” his Rocks’ club charge confirms. “But Gareth’s 37 now and he’s suggested it is going to be his last stand. It will be his last Commonwealth Games. It’s near the end for his basketball career. So if we can send him out on a high, we want that for him, considering how much he’s given to the to the game and Scottish basketball.”
When they’re done with Birmingham, there’ll be the kids awaiting Mr. Malcolm back at school. He’s got used to it now, the attention and the occasional brutal analysis from when the Rocks have been on the TV or attracted pupils along to watch the master at work.
That’s what sport should be about, he believes. About competing for the top marks available but also passing along the lessons learnt.
Big stages like the Commonwealths offer a grand opportunity to educate – and to illuminate the pathways on offer for those with ability and application.
“A lot of the kids who watched Olympics were asking me about 3×3. They were saying they wouldn’t normally watch it or go search for it online. Because it was on TV, they were talking about it. Same with the BMX in Tokyo as well.
“Just having these massive multi-nation events, the kids will watch it. Whenever they speak about Birmingham, I can give my experience of it first-hand. And if we can showcase our talent and our skillset on that level, it’d be great to be able to get some new fans or players who have been inspired or notice us through the Commonwealth Games.”
Article by Mark Woods