Beattie looking to get back on track quickly
Scottish Athletics chief sees opportunity for sport to be prioritised
After the pandemic, let’s try to set Scotland up as a much healthier place...having a minister dedicated to that would be huge
IN the pre-pandemic world, athletics in Scotland was in its healthiest state ever. At the elite level, numerous Scots were making their presence felt on the world stage, with medals becoming realistic targets rather than optimistic hopes.
On the grassroots side, things were perhaps in even better shape with record numbers of runners in Scotland’s massparticipation cross-country events, clubs flourishing and membership of the governing body extremely strong.
However, the damage caused by the pandemic over the past year has hit hard, with the restrictions that have lasted months putting a halt to much of the progress Scottish Athletics have worked so hard to generate in recent years.
From closures of indoor facilities to restrictions on the meeting of groups to the cancellation of every organised event over the past 14 months, it has been a tough year to navigate.
“There’s no doubt it’s been a very challenging time across the sport as a whole,” says Scottish Athletics chairman, Ian Beattie. “We’ve been trying to keep people involved through the clubs and through the virtual events, but there’s no doubt, everyone has found the past few months in particular very difficult.
“We understand there’s a pandemic going on and so these restrictions were necessary but it’s great to see things starting back up again.”
During Beattie’s tenure, he has seen membership of the governing body grow to well over 13,000 but that has taken a hit of 3,000 during the pandemic.
Much of that loss is likely due to the lack of events which attract club runners from all over Scotland and there could be another difficult summer ahead, with no sign of massparticipation events resuming any time soon.
However, Beattie is confident the situation is recoverable, with a number of positives coming out of the past year, especially with the increase in people pulling on a pair of trainers and going out running.
Clearly, there is not just one solution that will help sports recover, but there is one thing in particular that Beattie believes would go a long way in helping rebuild over the coming years.
“I think this is a really good opportunity for government to assess where they want to go going forward. I’ve always felt that sport could and should be seen as more of a priority because it feeds into so many other parts of society,” he says.
“Leading up to Glasgow 2014, we had a Commonwealth Games and Sports Minister and so if it was considered important enough then, should it not be considered important enough now?”
Currently, Maree Todd is the government minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport and few would dispute her brief is unmanageable for one person.
Beattie has seen first hand the positive impact sport can have on people’s lives and he believes the government should look at how they can move sport up the agenda which would, he argues, have a positive knock-on effect on other areas of society.
“After the pandemic, let’s try to set Scotland up as a much healthier place where people can reap the benefit of physical activity and sport, and having a minister dedicated to that would be huge.
“It’s currently difficult to see how anyone could, with the size of the current brief, have time to prioritise sport.
“I’d like to see sport prioritised to a much greater extent because we’ve seen the benefits of it. You could use sport to meet a lot of the other objectives and post-Covid, we could be a healthier society.”
Those who have helped grow Scottish Athletics in recent years are certainly worth listening to as they have managed to develop a hugely successful model which has produced success from the bottom to the top.
It is something few sports have mastered and Beattie believes the club structure within athletics is one of the primary reasons for the strong growth.
While rebuilding athletics at the lower levels is a priority, the Olympic and Paralympic Games are now on the horizon and Beattie knows better than anyone that Scottish athletes could do something special this summer.
From Laura Muir to Jake Wightman to Sammi Kinghorn, there are numerous medal prospects heading to Tokyo.
With Beattie’s tenure ending in the autumn, he is hugely excited about the chances of Scottish athletes returning home with silverware.
“It’s been great to see how the elite athletes have picked up where they left off,” he says. “I’d love to think Scots could win some individual medals. Standards always rise in Olympic year but seeing how the Scottish athletes have performed, they’re more than capable of rising to the challenge too.”
While the past year has been difficult, Beattie has high hopes for the coming year. And while 2020 taught us to expect the unexpected, he is optimistic that the sport will soon return to its position of strength.
“On the participation side, I’d like to see training sessions getting back to normal and competition starting back up again, and at elite level, I’d like to see the athletes continue to develop and perform well at the Olympic Games, that would be inspirational,” he says.
“I want us to start rebuilding back towards where we were. We’ve got a good model and so that will help us build back to a strong place. It’d be good to see us back to where we were in the not too distant future.”