Finlay Allan claimed the best result of his fledgling judo career when he picked up silver on his Commonwealth Games debut.
The 20-year-old was not tipped to reach the final of the -66kgs category but he cruised through to the gold medal fight, winning his first three fights by Ippon including a comfortable semi-final win over India’s Jasleen Saini to guarantee a medal.
In the final, he faced Georgios Balarjishvili from Cyprus, who had defeated Allan’s compatriot, Alexander Short, in his semi-final.
The Cypriot also proved too strong for Allan, winning by Waza-Ari while Short lost out in the bronze medal play-off to Northern Ireland’s Nathon Burns.
Despite Allan exceeding most people’s expectations, his initial feeling was one purely of disappointment at failing to land gold, but he admitted he’s likely to appreciate the scale of his achievement once some of his frustration over losing fades.
“It was a good fight and it was a tough fight but obviously I’m pretty gutted with the result because I wanted to come home with the gold,” Allan, from Cupar, said.
“I think eventually I’ll be happy with silver but at the moment, I’m just pretty gutted about losing gold.
“This is the highest calibre of competition I’ve fought in to date so it’s been a great experience to be a part of this and once I’ve had time to reflect, I’ll be feeling much better about it all.”
Malin Wilson also claimed a medal for Scotland, winning bronze in the -57kgs category with defeat of England’s Lele Nairne in golden score.
Wilson had come through the repechage to reach the bronze medal fight and she admits that it had been a tough day both physically and mentally but snatching a place on the podium made it all worthwhile.
A bronze is a hard one to win – but it’s an even harder one to lose. When you’ve lost, it makes it even more special to win bronze because you know that feeling of ‘I have got to win this’,” the 27-year-old from Inverness said.
“I came of the mat really tired and it hasn’t sunk in that I’ve got a Commonwealth medal.
“I had my coaches both shouting at me. I couldn’t think – I just did the grabbing and hoped it was enough.
“It’s incomparable to anything I’ve ever felt.”
Elsewhere, Glasgow 2014 gold medallist Kim Renicks lost out in her first fight to Cyprus’ Sofia Asvesta.
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