The disconnect between elite and grassroots sport across Scotland

All of these venues are now closed, under threat of closure, or seriously scaled back compared to their glory days.

And the list of facilities under threat is not limited exclusively to these three; rather, the list of sporting venues under threat in Scotland is lengthy, and is getting longer by the day.

This week alone, important players in both curling and athletics have expressed their concern for the future of their respective sports.

In the case of curling, the chief executive of Scottish Curling, Vincent Bryson, talked about his concern regarding the immediate threat to Dewars Centre in Perth, which houses the curling rink that the likes of Eve Muirhead and Rhona Martin called home, and which is touted to close and rebuilt without an ice rink.

If this happens, Bryson claimed in Mail Sport, it would be “cataclysmic” and would signal “effectively the beginning of an extinction level event for the sport.”

Add to that, there’s the comments from scottishathletics chair, David Ovens who, in these pages, expressed his concern about the threat of closure to one of athletics’ most important venues in this country, Grangemouth Stadium.

The closure of Grangemouth would, he says, be a significant blow to athletics in this country but there’s more than merely one venue to be concerned about, points out Ovens: “Grangemouth is a priority for us – we’re working with partners to make sure it stays open. But you look across the whole country and there’s a lot to worry about - numerous councils are really struggling with their budgets and facilities are an easy target.”

Plus, there’s the vocal concern of swimming chiefs at the imminent threat to the future of many swimming pools across Scotland.

There remains a quite astonishing disconnect between the grassroots and the elite side of sport within Scotland.

This country is, unquestionably, a world-class venue when it comes to hosting major sporting events.

For a decade, we have regularly hosted major sporting championships including the Commonwealth Games in 2014, several Davis Cup ties, the European Indoor Athletics Championships in 2019, the UCI World Cycling Championships in 2023 plus many, many more.

Some of the very best athletes on the planet have graced Scottish soil in recent years.

It has, there can be no argument, been a unique time for Scotland in terms of being a host country.

And it’s here that the lack of any joined-up thinking becomes so apparent.

There are few athletes, young or old, or sports fans who dispute that having major sporting events in this country is a positive thing.

I clearly remember as a kid watching the likes of Sally Gunnell, Colin Jackson or, in my own sport, Camilla Martin, with my own eyes.

Seeing the best in your sport can have a profound effect on aspiring athletes.

But that effect is severely curtailed if these young athletes have limited places in which to do sport themselves.

Incidentally, the World Indoor Athletics Championships come to Glasgow in March yet the Emirates Arena, where it will be held, has been closed for the entire winter in order to re-lay the track.

Admittedly, there is long-term planning and long-term positives in this case with the renovation of the track area but the timing is, by anyone’s measure, far from ideal. I challenge anyone to try to motivate a 12-year-old to do sprints outside on a freezing cold January evening because no indoor facilities are available.

But the Emirates’ closure this winter is the least of our problems.

Far more pertinent, and far more long-lasting, is the effect the permanent closures will have on sport in Scotland.

Sport has many more strands to it than merely its elite performers.

Indeed, in many respects, they are the least important of all in this conversation.

The threat to Scotland’s sporting facilities, which only seems to become more pressing with every passing week, will have substantial ramifications on grassroots sport and communities across Scotland.

It’s not the few dozen elite athletes who will be directly affected by closures that we should be worried about, it’s the thousands upon thousands of “normal” people who will be directly impacted that we should really fear for.

Ploughing hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of pounds into hosting elite sporting events is entirely futile if this country allows facilities to close in the way that’s been suggested may happen.

Scotland needs to start looking at the bigger picture or else the consequences will be dire.

AND ANOTHER THING…

Andy Murray’s admission earlier this week that we may have seen his last Australian Open appearance was as sad as it was predictable.

His lacklustre display in defeat to 30th seed, Tomas Etcheverry, was exactly what every Murray fan feared; that despite his insistence that training had been going well, he would not be able to translate it onto the match court.

Murray still has several months until the real focus of his season, the grass court swing, arrives.

As one of the greatest grass court players of recent eras, it remains a possibility that, on that surface, he can produce at least a glimpse of the form that took him to two Wimbledon titles and an Olympic gold medal.

Let’s hope he does find those glimpses because Murray deserves to hang his racquet up with a bang, rather than a whimper.