‘Stay in your own lane’ – Lee advice to our Team Scotland stars

Thursday 16th July 2026

Lee McConnell in Manchester in 2002 (photo via Team Scotland)

By Katy Barden

It’s the morning after the night before and Lee McConnell – one of Scotland’s most decorated track athletes with 12 medals from major Championships – is joyfully recounting her son’s cup final victory and the football club presentation evening that followed.

‘I think the parents were more excited about the boys winning than the boys themselves,’ she laughs.

‘It’s like, as an athlete, you’ve got all these medals, or been to all these competitions, but at the time you don’t appreciate it, you just move on to the next one.’

McConnell is speaking from experience. As a member of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s 4 x 400m relay quartet she was a multiple world and European medallist.

Individually, she was a European bronze medallist in the 400m (2002) and – representing Scotland – won Commonwealth Games silver and bronze in the 400m (2002) and 400m hurdles (2006) respectively.

She’s fortunate that her Grandad kept all her old newspaper clippings and she’s now got his scrapbooks to remind her of such memorable moments: ‘You forget about a lot of them,’ she says. ‘But when you go back over them it’s like, ‘Oh gosh, yeah, I remember that – that was fun’.

Lee looked back to the Games in Manchester 2002 in this PB piece (prior to Birmingham 2022)

McConnell’s was a hugely successful career that saw her compete at three Olympic Games including a home Games in London (2012), and three Commonwealth Games including a home Games in Manchester (2002).

She returned to training after the birth of her eldest son Ethan in October 2013 with the intention of competing for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, but she ultimately retired from the sport in April 2014.

Switching roles, Glasgow provided a thoroughly enjoyable media experience, but as a competitor, Manchester – home from home – created memories that will last a lifetime. Not because things were spectacularly different, but because they were exactly the same.

‘Although it was in England, it felt like a home Games to us,’ reflects the now-47-year-old.

‘You just got the train down – you didn’t need a holding camp – and obviously the big thing was the crowd support, I think all the home nations were treated the same.

‘The crowd were phenomenal and it was just knowing that I had loads of support. Don’t get me wrong, my friends and family travelled a lot to watch me – they were in Athens, Beijing, Melbourne – but Manchester was an easier one for them and so many of them were there. The weather conditions were also what we were used to, so it didn’t feel like we were far away at all.

‘You’re also with people that you’ve grown up with, the ones that you’ve come up through the age groups with.

‘I shared with Carey Easton (400m/4 x 400m relay) who was my training partner at the time, so that made life really easy. We got on very well, we were really good friends and we still are.

‘It was nice with all the coaches and staff too, people like Leslie Roy who was my team manager when I was 13 or 14-years-old, so you’ve got this team manager that you’re so familiar with, and it was the same with the coaches, you’re just so familiar with them because they brought you up through the age groups and now they’re looking after you at a senior level.

‘I remember that they were very good at just knowing what we needed because they knew us so well. It just made it really easy for us to perform well at those Games.’

Photo by Bobby Gavin

For the class of 2026, Glasgow will do exactly the same.

The more experienced athletes should know what to expect, but the beauty of the ‘Friendly Games’ is the incredible platform it provides for developing athletes to perform alongside those stars on the international stage.

McConnell won her first major individual medal in Manchester. The previous year she had gained valuable experience with the GB and NI 4 x 400m relay team at the World Athletics Championships in Edmonton, Canada, where they’d finished fifth. She’d also finished sixth in the 400m final at the World University Championships in Beijing, China.

‘I felt that being part of that (World) relay team meant I was ready for the next step up, you know, to compete as an individual athlete at a major champs. The next one was obviously Manchester, so it was a perfect stepping stone for me to go from the World Championships to the Commonwealth Games as an individual athlete.’

The Manchester Commonwealth Games experience remains one of her career highlights. It also kick-started one of her most successful years as she backed up her 400m silver with European bronze less than a fortnight later then went on to run a 400m personal best of 50.82 – which ranks her second on the Scottish all-time list – later that summer.

Lee and Jamie Bowie in the final year of her career

While Team Scotland’s athletes in Glasgow will inevitably have the backing of the crowd and the support of their peers, McConnell – who was 23-years-old when she competed in Manchester – highlights the importance of ‘staying in your own lane’.

‘Don’t look around too much at what other people are doing, just focus on you,’ she says. ‘Have faith in what you do in the lead-up to a race and just focus on yourself once you’re on the track – keep the blinkers on. Don’t look around and think, ‘Oh, that person’s doing this or that, should I be doing that?’.

‘Be confident that what you’re doing is the right thing, because what’s right for someone else might not be right for you. Don’t make any changes.’

Now a personal trainer and busy mum to two sporty sons (football currently dominates but they’re both members of Giffnock North AC, too), McConnell can reminisce about a career that was inspired in the school playground and played out on the greatest stage.

Times are different now, of course, and while in the glorious aftermath of their football triumph her son and his teammates were inevitably sharing fleeting comments, photos or memes with their friends online, the memories that stand the test of time are those that are captured in our hearts and minds. Or, in her case, fading photographs lovingly stuck in old scrapbooks.

For many of those who have been selected to represent Team Scotland in Glasgow this summer, it will be a once in a lifetime opportunity. Appreciate its significance and take it all in, because as McConnell wisely observes, sometimes you never truly know the value of a moment until it’s gone.

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Tags: Glasgow 2026, Lee McConnell