AILEEN McGLYNN emerged from the track cycling wilderness and Finlay Graham burst into the light as the Scottish pair claimed velodrome medals in Tokyo yesterday.
After representing Scotland at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Paisley’s McGlynn lapsed into effective retirement, went months without going to the gym and rode only socially.
She won gold in Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008, then silver at London 2012, but the emergence of dominant sprinter Sophie Thornhill led her to give up on another Games.
Thornhill – reigning Paralympic and world champion in the kilo – retired when the Games were postponed last year, leaving a hole in the British squad for Tokyo.
To fill it, coaches came calling for McGlynn, now aged 48. “I didn’t formally retire but I stopped training, I wasn’t doing weights or anything,” said the Scot, who is visually impaired.
“I never thought I’d go to another Paralympics. Then I got approached and it was like, ‘right, you’ve got a testing day in four weeks, get on Zwift and crack on.”
Thornhill’s retirement left a vacant stoker seat on the tandem behind sighted pilot Helen Scott, who set the world record in 2018 and won silver alongside McGlynn in 2012.
So 12 weeks before the Paralympics opened, McGlynn and Scott got the band back together, a whirlwind reunion that ended in a fairy-tale B 1,000m time trial silver.
The British duo’s medalwinning time of 1:06.743 was a massive personal best, more than two seconds quicker than they had gone before. They finished only behind a Paralympic record time set by Larissa Klaassen and Imke Brommer of the Netherlands.
It might have been a decade since they rode together but it seems the bond is lifelong when you have shared a bike and hared around a velodrome to two Paralympic medals.
McGlynn said: “We’ve got on so well, we’ve really bonded despite the restrictions of Covid. We’ve worked together so hard, each day, given every training session total focus and made the most of every time we’re on the tandem. It’s been perfect.”
At the other end of the spectrum when it comes to experience, 26-year-old Graham smashed the world record and then won silver in the C3 3,000m individual pursuit.
The Scot had only raced the distance twice at major events, finishing fourth at the 2019 World Championships and fifth in 2020, but in his qualifying ride yesterday, he brought down the seven-year world record – the oldest in track para-cycling – with an incredible 3:19.780 in his first Paralympic race.
Graham’s record only stood for 20 minutes, however, with team-mate Jaco Van Gass setting a new mark of 3:17.593.
“It means everything,” said the man from Strathpeffer, who only moved to track racing in 2017, learning his trade at the Chris Hoy Velodrome.
“Even if it was only for a short time, it’s so nice to say that I’ve broken the world record at the Paralympics. It stood for so long.
“The extra year has given me the time to prepare to do that. If the Games was last year, I wouldn’t have been in a good position to do that.”
The pair faced off in the final, with Van Gass winning by 1.13 seconds in 3:20.987.
“I wouldn’t want to lose to anyone else,” said Graham. “It’s great to share the podium with Jaco. We’ve been basically living together for the last two months and training with him is amazing.”
Van Gass, who suffered life-changing injuries when hit by a grenade on active service in Afghanistan in 2013, felt Graham played his part in his gold-medal performance.
“All the praise goes to Finn, he pushed me really hard,” said the 35-year-old.
“To be honest, the 3:19 was my aim and then he rode it, so I had to recalculate and go faster! He pushed me really hard in the final. I was on my last legs.”
Elsewhere, Ayr’s Robyn Love and Jude Hamer suffered further disappointment after a frustrating 54-48 loss to Japan made it back-to-back women’s wheelchair basketball defeats.
Sainsbury’s is a proud supporter of ParalympicsGB and a champion of inclusive sport for all. Sainsbury’s commitment to helping customers to eat better has been at the heart of what we do since 1869. For more information on Sainsbury’s visit www.sainsburys. co.uk/ and https://paralympics.org.uk/
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here