TEAM GB CLAIMS FIRST GOLD MEDAL

Rowing pair Helen Glover and Heather Stanning storm to victory

TEAM GB CLAIMS FIRST GOLD MEDAL

Rowing pair Helen Glover and Heather Stanning storm to victory

Yes, great to see. Heather Stanning also spent much of her youth in Lossiemouth where her parents still live (and there are plans to paint a post box gold!)

This also took the wind out of the sails of certain noisy red top tabloids which had large front page splashes this morning about the cyclist dubbed "Wiggo" in tabloidspeak becoming the first Team GB gold medallist.

But the great thing about today is that not only did Team GB get its first gold, and the first ever rowing gold for British women, but Bradley Wiggins also matched that later in the day to become GB's most bededalled Olympian ever.

How these guys have managed to recover so quickly from the Tour de France is quite remarkable.

I'd echo that. But what is really remarkable about Wiggins' victory is the margin of victory. He won by 41 seconds in an event lasting just under an hour. He could have stopped and signed a few autographs and still won.

Charles, do you remember Inverness gold medallist George Cornet?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/scotland/18396032

It looks like Charlie in the background in the hat. There is a tenuous link as a cornet is distinguished by its conical bore and Charlie is distinguished as a comical bore.

Thank christ for the Scottish race or there wouldnt be many medals.

And another gold to a Scot. Well done Murray

Murray was awesome, simply fantastic to beat the number 1 grass court player in the world by that margin.

Charles, do you remember Inverness gold medallist George Cornet?

http://www.bbc.co.uk...otland/18396032

Are you taking the p*ss Yngwie?

I do actually know a little about him though. I read that BBC item a couple of weeks ago and immediately remembered reference Alex Main had made to him in "Caley All The Way". Cornet was a major player for Caley in the early years of the 20th century. He was huge apparently and played in a variety of positions including RB and GK - perhaps the prototype for Ross Tokely!

He used to train at the old Montague Road baths which ceased to fulfil that function in the 1930s when the Friars Street pool opened and became a Coop for a while in the 80s before demolition.

Arguably Cornet is right up there as one of Inverness's greatest ever sports performers but would be seriously challenged for that accolade by the likes of Ian Young (Empire Games 100 and relay bronze medallist), Eddie Alexander (fourth Olympic cycle sprint 1988), Ewan MacDonald (3 times world curling champion) and more recently Mhairi Spence (2012 world modern pentathlon champion who competes on Sunday 12th in London). Then you could add in other Commonwealth Games folks like the Riddle brothers, Neil Fraser the hurdler (and former Caley youth player) and Myles MacKintosh the swimmer.

Thank christ for the Scottish race or there wouldnt be many medals.

So I wonder how the cycle Team Sprint would have fared if Sir Chris had two Scottish sidekicks rather than the ones he had? Then there's rowers Katherine Grainger and Heather Stanning and canoeists Tim Baillie and David Florence. What price their pairs golds with purely Scottish partners?

Sir Chris... that's the guy who has said that he couldn't have done what he's done without input at GB level and who trains in England along with the British team because there are no suitable facilities or partners in Scotland... as is the case with the likes of 400m hurdler Eilidh Child, modern pentathlon world champion Mhairi Spence from Inverness and a host of others.

I really don't think Team Scolympia, fending entirely for itself, would figure very prominently at all on the medals table in individual and especially in team events, where the vast majority of Scolympian combines simply wouldn't be viable or even able to reach Olympic qualifying standards.

Team Scolympia is simply a recipe for a great majority of Scottish sports performers to under achieve.

And not enough Jocks in the GBR football team - that's why WE didn't win a medal!

Charles. 10% of team GB are Scots yet over 50% of the medals won for the team have been won by Scots.

Earlier in the competition, you would have got a figure like 50% but only if you fully attributed to Scotland any team event medals where one of the team members was Scottish.

Poetic licence dear boy

Currently 9 out of Team GB's 37 medals (24%) had Scottish involvement. When you factor in the number of team members receiving medals it becomes 9 out of 75 (12%) which is still pretty impressive but much closer to our share of the team and indeed population.

Another stat is that in recent times around half of Team GB's medals have come from the minority who were privately educated. I think you'd find that is the case today even for the current crop of Scottish medallists.

There's something quite sad about all this. The fact is England has a population about ten times that of Scotland, so England is bound to produce more top athletes.

I quite like this Team GB thing where we are all united against the rest of the world once again.

What I don't like is this chip-on-the-shoulder attitude we Scots have developed towards our neighbours, where in football, for example, in the absence of quality in our own national team, we are reduced to hoping our neighbours lose and are quite proud of the fact we support whichever team is playing England!

I am proud to be Scottish, but whereas Scottish patriotism is viewed positively, we dismiss English patriotism as arrogance.

Charles. 10% of team GB are Scots yet over 50% of the medals won for the team have been won by Scots.

Mmmm... well that doesn't quite seem to square with this statement -

The majority of Team GB's medals are from English athletes, with 13% from Scotland, 2% from Wales and 4% from Northern Ireland. Another 9% are from overseas originally, although all Team GB athletes are British. Nearly a third of English medal winners are from the North, Yorkshire in particular.

Which in turn is a quote from from this Guardian database...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/2012/aug/06/team-gb-medal-winners-background#home

And of the Scottish medallists, just about everybody (apart from Murray in the singles and the swimmer who got silver) who got medals as part of Team GB did so in events where they were partnered by non-Scots and would REALLY have been struggling even to qualify to be there at all if they had had to depend on Scottish partners as part of Team Scolympia.

And that's before you consider that fact that Team Scolympia would be left scratching about north of the border for non existent training facilities which they currently enjoy elsewhere, and mainly in England, as part of Team GB.

Edited August 6, 201212 yr by Charles Bannerman

Yes Charles and if you went deeper into the data and download the full database you'll see that those who were part of a team have been credited with part of a medal.

Yes Charles and if you went deeper into the data and download the full database you'll see that those who were part of a team have been credited with part of a medal.

I am quite aware of that. It's exactly as they should be. Scottish competitors who are members of a team are credited with the proportional part of the medal - just like the non Scottish ones are.

Edited August 6, 201212 yr by Charles Bannerman

I think it's pretty incredible just how well Scots athletes/sports persons are doing considering that we're pretty much producing what we have despite the slim pickings we get in terms of investment in Sport and Sports Facilities.....investment that was, even before the Olympics, disproportionate.

Surely the argument must be that Scottish representation is succeeding despite TeamGB and not because of it!!!

Imagine what a Team Scotland could achieve if it was backed by an Independent Scotland who were investing with pride in it's own nation.

I am afraid I have to agree with Charles on this one I think Scottish medals would be very thin on the ground had we not been part of team GB. And do you honestly think an Independent Scotland would be investing a lot of cash in sport, where would the cash come from??

The cash would come from us not sending it south to pay for things like the "LONDON" Olympics and the legacy which will be left for "English Sport"....to the tune of £135 Million for grassroots sports, not a penny of which will come north.

SportScotland spent £6 Million investing in facilities on the promise of being allocated training camps....they got two teams who brought less than 30 athletes to camps in Scotland. More than £200,000 per (foreign) athlete!!!

Tens of millions of regeneration funding redirected from Scotland to the London boroughs around the Olympic Park area.

£150 million of Scottish Lottery Funding redirected to London.

To top it all off, economists reckon that Scotland saw a sizeable dip in tourism as people either went to London or avoided the UK altogether.

And that's just off the top of my head.

Compare that to the Commonwealth Games where Scotland will receive a grand total of "ZERO" funding from the UK Government and a legacy programme valued at less than £7 Million over 5 years.

To answer your question....Scotland would get the money from where it gets it at the moment, the only difference being that they retain it for themselves.

How about this

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/londonspy/yorkshire-10th-olympic-medal-table-135654936.html

Fund Team Scolympia with Barnet Consequentials I say!

Very interesting, though, that you seem to think that a wee population like 5 million is going to find medal capable team mates/ partners for the likes of Hoy, Stanning, Grainger etc etc in the same way as one of 60 million did. And of course that's assuming that people like Stanning and maybe a few others who were born in England would even half think about competing for separatist Scotland at all when they have the reassurance of the bigger base to play for. In fact I doubt if Stanning - possibly along with others - is even eligible for Scotland.

Presumably your sports facilities will come out from what's left of this imagined "bottomless pot" of cash AFTER it's been used to pay for all the separate embassies and consular facilities across the world and various other facilities which would presumably have to be created as a top priority?

Edited August 7, 201212 yr by Charles Bannerman

Where there's the will!!!!

After all, let's not forget that TeamGB themselves are punching way above their weight on the medal count...especially if you are comparing likelihood of success on population of the nation competing.

Acceptance of all competitors and competing countries regardless of race, religion, location, size, politics, wealth etc.....are these not the principles that underpin the entire concept of the Olympic Games? Surely if there's anywhere, or any event, where a country should be allowed to stand alone and on it's own merits and not have it's resources (especially when they are, as you claim, limited) ripped off to support those of another....then it's the Olympics.