Olympic funding backing for Pitreavie star Nicole
PITREAVIE AAC star Nicole Yeargin has been selected to receive funding from UK Athletics ahead of next year’s Olympic Games.
The 26-year-old, a two-time World Athletics Championships bronze medallist, is one of 67 athletes that has been nominated to join the organisation’s Olympic World Class Programme (WCP) for 2023/24.
Backed by the National Lottery, the UK Sport initiative aims to to identify, develop and support talented athletes towards medal success at the Olympic Games and other major championships.
Nicole, who represents Scotland and Great Britain, despite being born and brought up in the United States, as her mum, Lynn, is originally from Dunfermline, is one of eight Scots put forward for the programme.
The WCP is split into several levels reflecting actual and potential performance development levels of athletes, from the top tier ‘Olympic Podium’ level of funding to ‘Olympic Podium Potential’, ‘Olympic Relays’, and ‘Olympic Confirmation Level’, on both an individual and relay basis.
Maryland native Nicole, who was selected for last year’s programme, has been nominated in the ‘Olympic Relays’ level after bagging another major competition medal this year.
In August, she competed for GB at the World Athletics Championships,
held in Budapest, Hungary, in the women’s 4x400 metre relay.
Running the anchor leg in the final, Nicole helped clinch the bronze medal, in a split time of 49.80, securing a new team season’s best of 3:21.04.
That success in Budapest was Nicole’s second World Championship 4x400m bronze, following success at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Oregon, USA, where she also reached the semifinals of the individual 400m.
Nicole also won relay bronze last year at the European Athletics Championships, and for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
She is aiming to compete at her second Olympics in Paris, taking place in July and August next year, after competing at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
In those, she helped Team GB finish fifth and sixth in the women’s and mixed 4x400m relays respectively, but was disqualification in the heats of the individual 400m.