Eilish McColgan has revealed her plan to get Tayside kids involved in athletics and ensure none are frozen out by cost.
The Dundee star – who goes for the first Commonwealth Games medal of her career in Wednesday night’s 10,000 metres final – has opened up about Give Back to Track.
It’s the name of the vehicle McColgan has established to drive a new generation of Scots through the doors of the club that gave her a start.
And there is cash available to help them on their way, seed-funded with the some of the earnings the 31-year-old has racked up as a social media influencer and a top draw from meeting organisers across the world.
After-school sessions, travel grants and bags of help have been pulled together by McColgan and her ex-runner boyfriend Michael Rimmer in order to remove some of the roadblocks to plotting a path from Scotland towards the elite.
‘Five bursaries for young kids’
She said: “I’m going to start with Dundee Hawkhill Harriers just because it’s my local club.
“There will be five bursaries for young kids, both boys and girls.
“The club will decide, and trustees will nominate some young athletes that they know who are either from single-parent families, or low-income families, for whom the cost of like track fees and club fees is just too much.
“I’m wanting to make sure that those kids get a chance. Look at where the track is. Caird Park is obviously in a poverty-stricken area.
“And a lot of kids probably just don’t have the access. Some families won’t be able to allow their kids to even go to the Hawks.
“I didn’t want that to be a barrier. I’d love to extend that to other clubs in Scotland, and we’re trying to work out how we do that.
“But for now, it will be the Hawks that we support with those bursaries.”
She has a pot of cash too for a small group of hopefuls with designs on being golden girls at a future Commonwealth Games.
One, Natasha Phillips from Dundee, has already earned a Scotland vest since the funding came through. Others are working their way through the pipeline.
Mum Liz is an inspiration
And it was inspired, McColgan says, by the good Samaritans who stepped up to back her mum Liz when she beat the poverty trap and unlocked her full potential.
“My mum used to run to the track,” the Olympic finalist said.
“She couldn’t get the bus down or get a car or lift because my gran and grandad couldn’t offer that.
“My mum’s coach Harry Bennett, and an uncle of my mum’s and some people in the community, they effectively paid for a one-way flight from my mum to go on scholarship to the States.
“She didn’t have a clue where she was going or what she was doing. But it was an opportunity and people funded it and it changed her life.”
Rimmer – a European 800m medallist in 2010 who remains the tenth-fastest Brit of all time – now coaches his partner on a day-to-day basis with Liz acting as advisor on the side.
The Englishman’s mother died young, money was tight, and he relied on hand-me-down spikes secured by his coach.
Without that, his career might never have got out of the starting blocks.
And with a cost-of-living crisis leaving so many families feeling the pinch, demand for the small splashes of help that Rimmer and McColgan have been able to dish out has been huge since they threw their doors open.
Free after-school club in Dundee
Yet it’s not about building a production line of medals, the European medallist declares.
It’s about creating opportunity and a level playing field that means everyone can take their best swing.
“So we’re starting a free after-school club, which will start at the end August,” she reveals.
“Again, it’s in an area of deprivation in Dundee. I’ll pay two young coaches: a young female and a young guy at the Hawks who are athletes themselves, but also fully-qualified coaches.
“They will take the athletics club into one of the schools in that area, and the club will be completely free for kids one day a week.
“If it is successful, and we get a lot of kids, we will extend it to another day, maybe in another school, in another area.
“But for now, that’s the starting point that we’ll have.
“And if kids are talented and enjoying it, they can of course join the club and we then can support with the bursary side of things to fund that.
“We want to make sure they don’t have a barrier to get into the Hawks or to go on to do whatever they want in the sport.”
Full list of Dundee athletes going for glory at Commonwealth Games
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