From Jack to Jake: Fab five Scottish National Records fall in a fortnight

Sunday 19th June 2022

Eilish McColgan broke her mum’s Scottish Record for 10,000m in Hengelo (photo via HBK Games)

Scottish Record Alert! Jake takes down Men’s Mile mark after 40 years

Jack Lawrie almost certainly didn’t know what he was about to kick-start when he toed the line in Eisenstadt in Austria on the evening of Thursday 2 June.

Less than a minute later – or 50.07 seconds, to be precise – the Fifer had posted a new Scottish Record for the Men’s 400m Hurdles with his own lifetime best taking down a mark that had stood for a couple of decades.

Fast forward a fortnight and, shortly before 9pm, Jake Wightman was the athlete celebrating a new Scottish Record in the Men’s Mile after a strong run at the Diamond League Bislett Games meet in Oslo.

With a neat summary, from Jack to Jake, the latter’s 3.50.30 run for third place made it a round ‘fab five’ National Records achieved at Senior level in exactly a fortnight.

The marks have fallen in hurdles, sprints, discus and endurance (both long distance and middle distance) and that makes great reading for athletics in Scotland and our wider community across the globe.

No matter how the summer track and field season unfolds – and there are significant opportunities knocking over the next two months – the Class of 2022 are making very significant impressions on the all-time lists.

That’s a huge credit and encouragement for athletes and coaches because National Records and being top of the all-time list are athletics excellence in a Scottish context. The clue is in the labels.

Here are the five Records achieved in the past fortnight . . .

Thursday 2 June: Jack Lawrie; Men’s 400m Hurdles with 50.07 in Austria

Monday 6 June: Eilish McColgan; Women’s 10,000m with 30:19.02 in Holland

Saturday 11 June: Rebecca Matheson, Alisha Rees, Sarah Malone, Taylah Spence; Women’s 4x100m with 44.75 in Switzerland (equal Record)

Saturday 11 June: Nick Percy; Men’s Discus with 64.95m in Wales

Thursday 16 June: Jake Wightman; Men’s Mile with 3:50.30 in Norway

Jack Lawrie in action at Loughborough; his 400m Hurdles new National Record kicked off a fabulous fortnight (photo by Bobby Gavin)

With no apologies for repeating ourselves (and there’s been a lot of coverage on these achievements on our channels), we send our warm congratulations to the athletes involved and their coaches as well as the clubs who played important roles in their development work over a number of years.

‘I don’t think we can pinpoint quite ‘why now?’ in terms of Records being broken but it is a good sign,’ said Jake, in an interview with BBC Scotland.

‘Records should get broken as years pass. The world changes and there are advances in technology, equipment and so on. Or maybe one factor is just that there’s a really big summer coming with three major championships and people are pulling out performances to try and make teams.

‘To get the Mile Record which had stood for 40 years is special and, certainly in endurance, there are not too many left.

‘They have largely been obliterated in recent years and that’s good. I’m hoping Josh (Kerr) and Neil (Gourley) and myself can alter them again in the near future.

‘The more we can look at those Scottish lists and see 2020, 2021 and now 2022 against the name of the holder then I think the better that is for Scottish athletics.’