“Show us your medals!”

Until last Saturday Laura Muir was among those with reason to dread the demand that is seen as separating the best from the rest in sport, but as she arrived home from Belgrade last night she knew she need never avoid the subject again.

“For a number of years now, I’d been at championships where I was the only one of the girls not picking up a medal. It felt so unfair… yeah, it’s been hard not to have that medal to your name,” she admitted.

“The hardest thing was seeing people win medals and knowing you were capable of going faster than them. So it is nice to have gone out there and shown what I’m capable of doing.”

As the 23-year-old who seems to break records every time she sets foot on a track right now, aims to add more to her collection she believes these dual victories in the European Indoor Championships 1500m and 3000m will provide extra impetus.

“It gives you a bit of identity, having those medals, when you go into other events from now on,” she reckoned.

“You’ve stood on the podium before and that’s going to provide a lot of confidence going into future races.

“To have a couple of gold medals under your belt, you know they are yours now, they aren’t going to go away. That’s a great feeling.”

Completing a double, running four championship races in three days has also reinforced her belief in her capacity to run both the 1500m and 5000m at the World Championships in London in August.

“Just to know that I recovered in between rounds and I was running fast as well, I’m really, really happy with that,” said Muir.

“It shows that I can… I didn’t know if I could do that before. That bodes really well and shows our recovery methods are working. We don’t need to change that much. We can just practise it and, come London, I can hopefully be in the best shape for each round and hopefully the two finals.”

With renewed confidence also comes the assertiveness which led to one of the talking points of the weekend as Muir neatly sidestepped the official who was insisting that she was not allowed to do a lap of honour, to widespread approval.

“It was my very first senior medal and it was a gold one. I really want to do this victory lap,” she explained.

“She was quite persistent that I wasn’t going to get round but I thought ‘you know what, I’m just going to go’. I could see there were no other athletes on the track. I wasn’t going to hinder anybody. I’d only take 30 odd seconds.”

There was an amusing aside as we awaited the homecoming of Scottish sport’s new leading lady when, following a trip to the islands yesterday, the first minister appeared in the arrivals hall a few minutes ahead of Muir’s flight and unusually found herself that the phalanx of cameras and media men were not waiting for her. That said, her reaction was among those that added to the sense of achievement.

“I received a lot of nice messages, including from Judy Murray, Nicola Sturgeon and Kelly Holmes,” reported the new member of British sporting royalty.

There was, though, a poignant footnote to her breakthrough weekend as it emerged that the former mentor of her coach Andy Young, who steered him to the World Schools 1500m title, had died in between Muir’s medal successes.

Kenny McVey had, as Young explained in paying tribute, devised some key sessions that he still uses for his protégé and while he was saddened by the news he noted with his amusement that his old coach would have rightly claimed a share in the credit, something to which Muir had inadvertently paid tribute following her 1500m win on Saturday.

“I got back to the hotel and saw that my coach had suffered a heart attack on Saturday night and died,” he explained.

“Laura had spoken to the BBC, who asked her to give them a typical sessions. She actually gave them quite an easy one and the irony is that it was one of the training drills when he coached me from the age of 13 to 18.

“It’s a pity he wasn’t around to see Laura say that (because) for the last 20 years, he’s been reminding everyone that he taught me everything I know,” Young continued, laughing wistfully at the memory.

“It’s a huge tribute to Kenny. There are two or three of the sessions I still use and one particular session, a change of pace that I always loved as an athlete.

“She sometimes says: ‘Oh, we’re not doing that one again!’ but that’s where the change of pace comes from, genuinely. We work on that and I learned it from him.

‘So everybody who enjoyed Laura running away from everyone at the end of Sunday’s race, they owe Kenny a bit of gratitude.”