Six contest Para Athlete of Year and coach Jamie short-listed, too

Tuesday 19th November 2019

Kayleigh Haggo and Gavin Drysdale celebrate gold medal joy in Dubai (photo via Twitter)

Scoland’s elite Para Athletes came up with a superb collective performance at the World Para Athletics Champs to return home from Dubai with six medals and a couple of World Records in RaceRunning.

Added to a silver medal for Derek Rae at the London Marathon back in April, it means our Para athletes have posted no fewer than seven global medals thanks to fine performances and good coaching – four golds; two silver and one bronze.

The achievements will be celebrated on Saturday evening at our (sold out) FPSG Awards Dinner in Glasgow with Guest of Honour Paula Radcliffe.

And scottishathletics are delighted to today confirm six contenders for our FPSG Para Athlete of the Year award – with the winner to be revealed late on Saturday night.

Here are the six FPSG Para Athlete of the Year contenders (in alphabetical order):

Jo Butterfield: The F51 athlete is coached by Phil Peat and Shona Malcolm and is a scottishathletics Board member. Jo took silver in Club Throw event in Dubai – her first time on the podium at the World since 2015.

Gavin Drysdale: The Red Star AC athlete continues to push back RaceRunning Records, winning gold with a World Record of 16.72 seconds in the Dubai RR3 Men’s 100m final. Gavin dedicated the success to the late Janice Eaglesham, who passed away earlier this year

Kayleigh Haggo: Kayleigh won gold in Dubai in the RR3 Women’s 100m final with a superb performance which took the World Record to 18.32 seconds. Like Gavin, she dedicated the gold to Janice Eaglesham with her coaching now undertaken by Ian Mirfin.

Sammi Kinghorn: Returned to the shorter distances on the track after post-Gold Coast 2018 break – and, despite an operation during the summer, the popular wheelchair-racer coached by Ian Mirfin took a bronze medal in the 100m.

Maria Lyle: The Dunbar sprinter coached by Jamie Bowie has successfully battled mental health issues and in Dubai competed over 100m and 200m at T35 – winning gold at the shorter distance to become World champion for first time and then adding the 200m gold, too!

Derek Rae: Coached by Ron Morrison, the Fife AC athlete has had another superb year. In London in April, Derek took a silver medal at the World Para Athletics Marathon Cup with his PB coming down from 2:33.24 to 2:27.08 – within 14 seconds of the European record in his T46 classification.

Magnificant Maria lands double gold in Dubai

We’re also pleased to announce that Jamie Bowie, coach to double World Para Athletics Champs sprint medallist Maria Lyle, has been added to our Performance Coach of the Year short-list.

The Performance Coach of the Year short-list now reads (in alphabetical order)

Jamie Bowie

Sophie Dunnett

Robert Hawkins

Liz McColgan-Nuttall

Andy Young

+++

All at scottishathletics send our congratulations to the GB and NI support team in Dubai and the individual athletes as well as their families and coaches.

With Dubai now concluded, we can confirm that Ian Mirfin has left his role with scottishathletics as Event Lead for our elite Para athletes.

Ian has made a significant contribution to great success for Scottish athletes on the Para scene over the past few years, working for scottishathletics in tandem with his own personal coaching role to specific athletes.

We thank Ian for his commitment and wish him well for the future.

+++

Tags: Derek Rae, FPSG Awards, FPSG Para Athlete of the Year, Gavin Drysdale, Ian Mirfin, Jamie Bowie, Jo Butterfield, Kayleigh Haggo, Maria Lyle, Sammi Kinghorn