It was a glittering moment in Scottish sporting history: the sight of Eilish McColgan, teeth gritted, surging past her Kenyan rival, Irine Cheptai, to win the 10,000m at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
It wasn’t just a gold medal for the Dundonian, but a heartwarming case of her following in the footsteps of her mother, Liz, who was watching and cheering on her daughter inside the stadium as the race reached its momentous climax.
And, at the denouement, the scenes of the pair embracing in spontaneous joy, even as it was confirmed that Eilish had shattered the previous Games record, only added to the sense we had all been invited to a party thrown by this inspirational family.
In the aftermath, Liz told the BBC: “As an athlete myself, you have fond memories of having success, but when it’s your own children, it’s like 100 times better.”
But where does her achievement rank in the list of individual Scottish sporting triumphs from the last 30 or 40 years? We’ve chosen a few of those from the archives which will hopefully offer a warm glow, but this isn’t a definitive list by any means.
So let us know if you have your own golden moment which you want to share.
When Liz was queen of the world
I’ve never forgotten the brutally effective fashion in which Liz McColgan powered to victory in the 10,000m at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in 1991. She was the only Briton, male or female, to collect an individual gold medal at the competition, but that simply added to the scale of the achievement by the Dundonian.
And she triumphed by producing a magnificent display of leading from the front, which was described by former Olympic medallist-turned-TV-commentator Brendan Foster as the “greatest-ever performance by a British distance runner, man or woman”.
She was immersed in her own little bubble, recording a series of blistering laps with metronomic precision, and spoke at the finish as if she had just completed a gentle jog in the park. Unforgettable, in every way.
It was a win that brought her a litany of honours, including an MBE and the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.
When Allan Wells won in Moscow
There was no shortage of pressure on Allan Wells’ shoulders in the build-up to the Moscow Olympics in 1980. The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan sparked calls for a boycott and the United States and China were among the countries who withdrew.
Wells was one of the athletes who were urged by the British Government not to participate – and he later told me how he received pictures of dead Afghani children in the mail from the government to try to dissuade him from competing.
But he stuck to his guns, put his body through the wringer and, backed by his wife Margot, sprinted into the history books when he surged out of the blocks to edge out the pre-race favourite, Silvio Leonard of Cuba, by the thinnest of margins.
It was a magnificent theatre, but some argued that Wells’ achievement had been made easier by the absence of the Americans who traditionally dominated the event.
However, just a fortnight later, he beat them all at a track meeting in Koblenz in West Germany and one of them, Mel Lattany, told him: “You’re the Olympic champion and you would have been Olympic champion no matter who you ran against in Moscow.”
When Andy Murray won Wimbledon
It’s an image which still sends shivers up my spine: the moment when Andy Murray completed a straight-sets victory over Novak Djokovic to seal success at Wimbledon in 2013 and become the first Briton to win there since before the Second World War.
In a frenzied atmosphere reminiscent of his Olympic final win the previous year, the Scot was willed on by the majority of the 15,000 spectators on Centre Court, thousands watching on the big screen outside at the venue and millions more around the country.
The 26-year-old Dunblane player was pushed all the way by his Serbian opponent in sweltering heat, but eventually converted his fourth championship point in a nerve-shredding denouement to win 6-4 7-5 6-4 and claim his second major title.
He said later: “I didn’t know what to do with myself. The noise levels during the whole match were just incredible. It was unbelievably tough.”
But Murray had ended one of the longest-running hoodoos in the sporting chronicles.
When Paul Lawrie picked up Claret Jug
It was one of the greatest collapses ever witnessed in sport: the prolonged water torture suffered by France’s Jean van de Velde as he went on an impromptu paddling session in the Barry Burn at the 1999 Open Championship at Carnoustie.
Yet, even as his triple-bogey seven on the last hole led to a play-off, there was still a tournament to be won and it was Aberdeen’s Paul Lawrie who rose to the challenge in life-changing fashion with a spine-tingling sangfroid.
In the space of a few moments, Lawrie seized his opportunity, prevailing over Van de Velde and America’s Justin Leonard as 9pm came and went and the trains stopped around the championship course. And he remains the last Scot to land a major title.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man
As he told me: “At the time, I felt a bit hard done by with the way my victory was reported. I had shot a 67 in the final round of the Open in extremely difficult course conditions, but the headlines were all about Jean’s collapse.
“Looking back, I see it slightly differently these days, but I am still every bit as proud of my performance both during the final round and then in the play-off as I was all those years ago. The opportunity arose and I grasped it with both hands.”
When Chris Hoy won his first Olympic gold
Chris Hoy had to sit patiently while his rivals kept breaking records and posting new milestones at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. It might have deflated lessser individuals as his task became increasingly tough, but the redoubtable Scot not only held his nerve, but produced the first of many pulsating Games exploits.
He had arrived in Greece in the form of his life with his sights set on the Kilo time trial, but because he was ranked No 1, was the last athlete to take to the track.
Even as the tension mounted, the world record was shattered no less than four times while he watched the action and waited for his turn. Hoy had been involved in an accident in the athlete’s village just a few days prior to competition where he came off his bike in front of a bus, narrowly avoiding serious injury.
When he came out of the starting gate, his scarred arms and legs showed how close he was to not competing, but he was undaunted as he hunted down his first Olympic title, setting a new world and Olympic record of 1.00.711 with a coruscating display.
It marked the start of one of the most glorious careers of any Scottish athlete and Hoy was indomitable at the next two Games in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012.
With a total of seven Olympic medals, six of them gold and one silver, he is the second most decorated Olympic cyclist of all time. But nothing was more impressive than his performance when it mattered 18 years ago.
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