The sporting spotlight is about to shine on Birmingham as more than 5,000 athletes from 72 nations prepare for 280 events over 20 sports at the Commonwealth Games.
From Thursday (July 28) until Monday, August 8, Angus eyes will be on five home-grown talents going for gold in basketball, lawn bowls and squash.
And there will be special focus from Arbroath since three of them are Red Lichties.
Graham Brown profiles our local heroes.
Darren Burnett
This will be the sixth Commonwealth Games for Angus bobby Darren stretching back two decades to Manchester 2002.
The Arbroath 46-year-old’s remarkable medal collection includes two Commonwealth golds.
He was the men’s singles champion at Glasgow 2014 – narrowly missing out on the defence of his title four years’ later.
But he did strike gold again in 2018 as a triples champion alongside Ronnie Duncan and Derek Oliver on the Gold Coast.
Speaking to The Courier’s Stephen Eighteen last month, Darren said: “Glasgow was amazing and hard to ever beat, but to go and do that was a different type of challenge.
“The atmosphere was phenomenal.
“That was the drive needed to keep me going. It was the fact that to do it in Australia was a tough ask. It ended well.”
Gareth Murray
This will be former Tayside Musketeer Gareth Murray’s third games as part of Scotland’s basketball side.
The Arbroath-born 37-year-old made his Team Scotland debut at Melbourne 2006.
He returned for the 2018 Gold Coast Games, helping the side reach the bronze medal match, where they were pipped to fourth place by New Zealand.
Gareth, who stands 6ft 7ins tall, is player-coach with Scotland’s only professional basketball side, Glasgow Rocks.
In 2020, he said: “When I was growing up in high school, my coaches were the two PE teachers.
“John Grant ran Arbroath Musketeers in his spare time. Keith Ritchie took a lot of the team.
“And we also had John Anton who taught PE in Carnoustie and who was a head coach of the Scotland team Under-16s as well.
“Those guys are still big influences on me as a player because they weren’t about team success.
“Obviously you want to win and that’s what the goal was. But it was all about individual practice and individual fundamentals and producing players.”
Hannah Robb
Hannah Robb, 24, is another basketball player who has made it all the way from Tayside Musketeers to the Commonwealth Games, as part of the first Scottish women’s team to qualify for the event.
Her talent also shone on the court at Arbroath Sports Centre and Hannah has represented Scotland at every level from U-13.
The 5ft 9ins shooting guard played four seasons with Caledonia Pride in the Women’s British Basketball League.
Lichtie Hannah has just signed for a third season with Leicester Riders and was a key member of their 2020/21 WBBL Cup-winning side.
Last year she said seeing Gareth Murray start for his country at major tournaments fed her desire to follow suit.
“Having that kind of basketball talent, from home especially, it definitely gives you something to look up to.
“And it makes it all possible. I’m just a kid from Arbroath. But he’s done it. So, why can’t I? And why can’t the next, then the next?”
Lisa Aitken
Montrose squash player Lisa Aitken is making her third Commonwealth Games appearance.
She arrives in Birmingham in superb form from the World Doubles Championships in April where she took bronze in the mixed event and was fifth in the women’s competition.
She said: “The national coach gave me a call which was such a relief because even though I’m the highest ranked female player and number one in Scotland, there was no guarantee that meant I was going to go.”
At Delhi 2010, Lisa reached the quarter-finals of both women’s and mixed doubles competitions after a remarkable comeback from serious illness.
And she had a successful Gold Coast 2018 competition, finishing in the top ten of both the women’s doubles and mixed doubles
In 2019, she and Mark James set a world record at Montrose sports centre with the longest squash rally of 3,606 shots.
Aitken is a student at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, three years into a brewing and distilling degree.
In 2020, the 32-year-old – enrolled in the university’s Sports Scholarship programme – told The Courier: “Many years ago my dad (Steve) made it his mission to collect a bottle of whisky from every distillery that Scotland has ever had.
“What used to be a kids toy room is now a whisky room. He’s got a massive collection in there.
“I just wanted to hang out with him so I went to auctions. I wasn’t interested in whisky and I definitely didn’t like the taste.
“The more I learned about it, the more interested I became.”
Shona Campbell
Shona Campbell is contesting her first Commonwealth Games as part of the women’s Rugby 7s side.
It’s the latest honour for the Montrose girl who started out at the Angus town’s rugby club at the age of five.
Campbell, 21, continued in the sport before taking a break at the age of 14 to compete at national level in netball.
But she returned to the oval ball game and made her Scotland 7s debut in the first leg of the 2021 Rugby Europe Sevens Championship Series in Lisbon.
It was a sparkling start to her international career, scoring four tries in the opening round.
Following her impressive performances in Lisbon, Campbell travelled to Moscow for the second and final leg of the Rugby Europe series.
The former Dundee High School pupil has also competed at a national level in touch rugby.
She was a part of the Scottish mixed team who claimed bronze in the World Cup finals in Malaysia in 2019.
Campbell currently plays for Edinburgh University while studying for a degree in psychology.
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