Athletics

In an event which will see the last track appearances of megastars Usain Bolt and Sir Mo Farah, Scotland’s Laura Muir is understandably not quite top of the bill, but she’s not far short of it.

DUNDEE United hero Paul Hegarty has taken part in a friendly kick-about by the seaside to launch Kiltwalk in the city.

Sammi Kinghorn and Stef Reid became Scotland’s golden girls of Super Saturday at the world para athletics championships in London, the duo triumphing as the UK’s medal tally at the showpiece expanded still further.

Scotland’s Stef Reid was overjoyed to shed her serial silver status with T44 women’s long jump gold on day two of the World Para Athletics Championships in London.

Scotland was already assured of a record number of athletes in next month’s highly-anticipated IAAF World Championships in London but that grew to 13 yesterday – one sixth of the 78-strong Great Britain team.

Laura Muir dismissed any disappointment after she missed out on breaking Zola Budd’s 32-year-old mile record.

Legends Sir Mo Farah and Usain Bolt will end their glittering track careers at the world championships in London next month, with the former switching his attention to the marathon.

The mythology of Laura Muir can sometimes stretch beyond the realms of reality, no matter how fantastic her ascent has been over the past five years. The frequent thesis is that the future double European champion comes wholly from post-London 2012 generation when, by that Olympian landmark, she had already earned the first of what have become numerous British vests as a junior at the Euro Cross in Slovenia.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since Steph Twell’s heart was broken when injury denied her a chance to run at the 2012 London Olympics.

Laura Muir proved she’s back on track by running the quickest 800 metres of her life at the Diamond League meeting in Lausanne.

Zoey Clark went into last weekend’s world championship trials with the fastest British time of the year – a 51.84 seconds personal best achieved in Geneva last month – so she wasn’t exactly an underdog as the gun went on Sunday for the women’s 400m final.

Sir Mo Farah has stressed he has never been a doper after the Russian hacking group the Fancy Bears released a huge batch of documents and emails which they claimed is from the International Association of Athletics Federations.

If you’d said a decade and a half ago that a couple of lads from Dunblane would win multiple
Wimbledon tennis titles you would possibly be urged to seek help.

Sir Andy Murray knows well the frustration of being at the top of his game but finding that not one, but three, just have a bit more.

If a legitimate case is to be made for replacing Meadowbank Stadium and upgrading, rather than demolishing, its athletics infrastructure, then one finish-line photo in Birmingham would speak louder than the most eloquent 
advocate.

Eilidh Doyle leads another Scottish raiding party to Birmingham this weekend as the British Championships and World Trials take centre stage.

The scars, the trauma, the lingering after-effects, they might never truly evaporate, Mark Dry reveals. A knife penetrating through tissue, then muscle, may be anaesthetised for a few hours but it wears off and reality kicks in. Injured in the lead-up to his maiden Olympic appearance last summer, the hammer thrower knew he would need extensive repairs when his hip was reconstructed last October, just weeks after his return from Rio.

London is calling Lynsey Sharp. All points en route are merely background noise. However, the former European­ 800m champion is showing signs of easing along a trajectory that will afford her the opportunity to pitch for a place in the final at August’s IAAF world championships and then see where the fates take her then.