The Green Isle of the Great Deep

Flying, originally uploaded by ccgd.

Extracts from a travellers log – next volume…..

Well Glasgow won the Commonwealth games bid for 2014. Outstanding, just brilliant.

I was in Boston when the news came through, in fact on the T from downtown to MIT, when my phone rang. Now phones do not ring on Subway trains in Europe in my experience, so it took a minute to work out it was mine. It was also first thing in the morning Boston time, so although I knew that the choice would be announced on the Friday, I was not expecting it until later in the day. Sophisticated international traveller that I am I had simply forgotten about the time.

Hitting the green button, I heard Ruth say, “Glasgow’s won”, and I must admit that my heart gave more than a little jump. I was on the T with my colleague Donal, a Dubliner whose adopted home has been Glasgow for the past 18 years. I blurted out – Glasgow’s won! - and we both gave that strange little dance that men in their 40’s do when hearing good news on the sporting front, accompanied with broad smiles. All this on a crowded T – in Boston – so we got a few strange looks (all except for a young lassie a couple of seats away, who broke out into a wide grin when she overheard the news – and then flashed a shy but genuine smile in our direction. She must have had some connections with Scotland).

Well for those of you who follow bits about me and my family through this blog, will know that Glasgow winning the 2014 games bid mean a bit more than pleasure at Scotland Hosting a major sporting event, or a professional interest in the regeneration of Glasgow’s east end (both very important issues I must stress). No, its because we have in our Magnus one of Scotland’s three hundred 15 and 16 year olds who “are in the system” in other words who are part of the nations sporting talent teams and youth squads, all being trained and developed to provide the athletes who will represent Scotland in 2014.

All a bit humbling really, and one never knows what will happen with individuals over the next 6-7 years, especially ones own family. But I do know that when the opening ceremony takes place in Parkhead in 2014, some of the athletes marching behind the Saltire will be kids that Ruth and I have known and cheered through Scottish Cycling’s talent teams and development squads, and for that we will be immensely proud for them, knowing the work, dedication and effort that will have gone in to helping them get there.

Oh the photo – it’s Magnus at the final of the Scottish Track Championships earlier this year, where he won the silver medal in the 2k pursuit (loosing out on the gold by a tenth of a second) and he and his pal Patrick who won, smashing the Scottish record in the process). The P&J used it in an article about young athletes from the North of Scotland who are working towards the 2014 games. Never got paid for it though…….

Do I care? Not a bit, just chuffed as ……..

One interesting postscript – Have just spent the night at a Heathrow hotel, and for once – and because it was a Sunday so no early flights home – had time to read all the “National” (ie English) Broadsheets. The Times, the Telegraph (it’s OK – I washed my hands afterwards), the Observer etc. Not a mention of Glasgow and the Games, not a single mention. In the news pages, in the sports pages, in the review sections, not a single mention. Now travelling through England-shire on a regular basis does highlight the fact that the issues – and articles – you see in the “Scottish” editions of the English papers, are conspicuous by their absence sooth o the border, but I wonder what a trawl through the relevant newspapers archives of the early 90’s when Manchester won the Commie games would show.

Just a thought, or am I just being “unhelpful”…….

Posted by Flickr Scotland on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 3:33 PM | Permalink