Strathclyde in a class of its own

from a wee newspaper in that Edinburgh, Jim MacRitchie.

Resplendent in blazer and flannels he was. I wasn't, because I

remember last year's wee foxes pass at this lovely venue when I turned

up in the full outfit looking like Sir Thomas Lipton, with every

competitor demanding instructions about where the lavatories were.

I learned my lesson. Mr MacRitchie sent me to the right tent, which

was, well, the beer tent. Ensconced there was the Glasgow Rowing Club,

what was running the free-flow of libations because they, like every

rowing club in the world, are in need of funds. Well not every rowing

club at all, really. Some of them are doing okey-dokey.

How many times do I have to write this? If it was up to the powers

that be, they would be having football the only sport and treating them

like crap. Toffs go to Ascot instead of the dugs. Football has the

money, rugby the Establishment ambience, cricket has both.

But minority sports have a dreadful task of balancing it all. Clyde

and Clydesdale Rowing clubs do not even speak to each other, for

heaven's sake, and they live in the same damned building on the River

Clyde at Glasgow Green where the People's Palace is seconds away and

there are more Trotskyists than youse could have found in St Petersburg

in the 1905 revolt.

Lev Davidovich would not be welcomed in the rowing fraternity for this

sport's boys and girls invariably are drawn from an entirely different

class.

The next people I talked to were from the upper division and very nice

and pleasant they were too. Here I was talking to lovely, splendid tall

girls called Isabal and Faye.

They were blonde and brunette and I fell in love instantly. Both had

been the winners of Junior 14 girls' races, and it was then that I

realised I was talking to two schoolgirls from George Heriot's School in

Edinburgh.

I had been warned about this cabal. I was forewarned, really, because

coach George Hunter, of George Watson's, had already demanded that I

present -- which I did -- the gold medals to the under-18s eights

winners.

Heriot's is a big deal in the rowing because I threw the ribbons over

the necks of a Heriot's crew who had beaten a Heriot's and Dumfries

crew, (it's known collectively as ''Nithsdale'') and it wisnae really

fair, for the Nithsdale lads had caught a buoy on the way, and lost out

as a result.

I suppose, all the same, that a lot of expensive Edinburgh schools get

themselves into trouble quite regularly with catching buoys. I withdraw

that remark immediately. Shocking.

But Strathclyde Park is a marvellous venue for this, and showed it

late in the afternoon with a burst of sunshine. As it happens, it is an

ideal place for the Olympics, for the area has every single advantage

for water and field sports.

One of the basic difficulties in Scottish, and indeed British, sport

is the idiocy of not getting the settings or regulations right.

Meadowbank Stadium, for instance, is seconds short of Olympic

requirements. Well Strathclyde Park has it all there. It could do

Olympics, believe me.

We most certainly could do well, too, because did I not encounter

Gillian Lindsay, who was in the Olympic rowing team for 1992. Only five

years rowing, she has been four years an internationalist. She is, after

all, six feet tall, and played basketball for Scotland as well.

Hailing from Paisley, and an employee of Sun Alliance, (who, she tells

me, are very supportive indeed, and good luck to them), she insists that

I give a jolly to her former teacher at St Andrews -- her home town --

and now coach, Richard Walsh. It is not the first time, and it will not

be the last that I shall discover these marvellous young people who

ascribe their achievements to the help of others, but it is splendid to

hear all the same.

And another young person who achieved much on Saturday was none other

than the son of my old pal and pedagogic adversary George Warnock, the

old buffer (couldn't resist that, George), who won the vets' pairs. His

son Alistair, a Hutchie lad, (how well I remember the days when my own

alma mater Glen's won every damned thing in sight), won two races and

was in spectacular form.

After having won the junior individual sculls, he scored a genuine

beauty by beating the experienced Willie Brown in the senior event. I

wis told that the contest was reminiscent of the two Searle brothers

beating the Abbagnale boys on the line in Barcelona at the last

Olympics. I will just have to take my informants' word for that. I most

certainly took the large whisky which proud dad George poured out for

me.

But one of the reasons why you find me at these recondite sports is

that there is a lot of merriment and enjoyment in taking part, even if

it is only me in with bad company. Good company it was with the Glasgow

club who are currently trying to raise sufficient funds for a new

boathouse near Richmond Bowling Club.

They are only looking for seventy grand and Glasgow District Council

is sympathetic, but it is a lot of money all the same. Considering what

a real ''extra'' it is having a bloody great collection of rivers,

lochs, waterways, and canals, which Scotland does, it seems daft to make

so little use of our wet stuff. Crivvens, we have enough of it.

Then we have the Loch Lomond Club frae Balloch. Two boys' and two

girls' crews. Jack Reid has been coach for the last four years. His

daughter Sarah, aged 15, and son Chris, 18, are members and keen. Jack

telt me the best lie I have ever heard in sport. Said the Balloch-based

crew came in second. That's true. Neglected to tell me that there were

only two crews competing. I'll give you that one, Jack. A stoatir.

Or how about the two grand lads from the Stirling club, Fraser and

Ollie, who hudnae done very well, they agreed, and introduced me to

Eleanor, a fine-looking lass from the local area who was, as happens in

sport these days, one of the random sportspeople who was to be

drug-tested.

I asked what her second name was. It took me a day to realise that she

is by no means called Rigby. The boys will have their fun. So will

myself at that.