|
Susan EgelstaffHerald Scotland |
When Sir Chris Hoy revealed his cancer diagnosis earlier this year, most people, I think, believed he’d get through it. Surely, a man who’s one...
When the Alba Development Road Team launched in early 2022, I looked on with a mixture of excitement, admiration and scepticism. It was a novel and...
Show me anyone who says they care about a sporting exhibition and I’ll show you a liar. Literally no one cares. Not the athletes, not the fans...
I can’t have been the only one that assumed Scottish tennis was going to fall off a cliff with the retirement of Andy Murray earlier this year. ...
Track and field has a problem. Its problem is, for one week every four years, it’s the biggest show in town. Track and field ,as we witnessed...
I wish I could say, upon hearing the news this week that the 2026 Commonwealth Games will come to Glasgow, that I felt a wave of excitement within me....
There are few things pettier than two older privileged men behaving increasingly passively aggressively towards each other in the pursuit of sporting...
Tennis’ “Big Three” has been such a constant in the sport for so long that any preceding era seems like a lifetime ago. We’ve known for...
I still remember feeling a thrill of excitement when walking into the Susi Susanti Sports Hall in Indonesia; the former Olympic badminton champion...
Being world number one in any sport brings plenty of perks. Fame, money and privilege are all benefits that arrive with becoming the world’s...
Having spent 15 years of my life as an elite badminton player, I’m no stranger to random people claiming they could beat me. This, despite the...
We have now arrived at the final day of Paris 2024. This summer’s Olympic Games, following the corruption-ridden Games in Rio in 2016 and the...
Of the 329 gold medals contested at Paris 2024, few have generated more interest than one which will be awarded today. This evening, Imane Khelif...
It was fitting that Andy Murray’s professional tennis career ended only after impossible victories, tears, jubilation and finally, acceptance. ...
I still vividly remember my first taste of the Olympic Games. It was 1992, I was nine years old, and what started out as a curiosity about the...
We’ve known for months that Andy Murray was edging closer to hitting his final tennis ball in anger. We are now just days away from this...
Many factors contribute to an Olympic Games being a success – or, occasionally, being less than successful. There is, of course, much riding on...
Maybe it’s that I’m getting cynical in my old age. I probably am. But for all the magic of the Olympics Games, I’m unable to think about...
We’re just days away from the tenth anniversary of the greatest fortnight in recent Scottish sporting memory. Ten years ago, the country, and...
So many of Scotland’s sporting greats are from the last few decades. Andy Murray. Chris Hoy. Josh Taylor. And then, if you go a wee bit further...
Harry Kane and his compatriots have, I’m certain, been called far worse. Yet the outcry over the England football team being called “s**t” –...
The month-or-so before the Olympic Games is such a weird time for an athlete. Only the tiniest of improvements can be made in such a short space of...
The thing with a golden generation is how on earth do you follow it up? For years, the question in and around British tennis was “who’s the next...
Whenever the question is about solving a problem in one’s private life, the right answer is never, ever to make a rash decision to return to a...
It’s ironic that, of all the players over the first week of the French Open, the biggest winner was someone who lost in the second round. Naomi...
For quite some time, the vultures, in the shape of physiotherapists and medical professionals, have been circling above Rafa Nadal. It seems...
The only thing better than a friendly rivalry is an entirely acrimonious rivalry. The chummy, respectful rivalry in which the likes of Roger Federer...
Potentially within days, but certainly within weeks, we’ll know for certain if the Commonwealth Games are imminently returning to Scottish shores....
The thing about sport is that it’s constantly moving on, constantly improving, constantly evolving. Records that were set in previous decades are...
I vividly remember finding out about the Russian doping scandal of 2014. Like most people, I was in utter disbelief about the revelations of the...
Elite sport, as every athlete knows all too well, is a brutal place. Show me an athlete who claims never to have faced an obstacle and I’ll show...
Considering the astronomical sums of money involved in top-level sport these days, it’s somewhat quaint to consider that so many of the world’s...
Even the most short-sighted of observers saw this one coming. Saudi Arabia is going to take over tennis, the only question now being if it’ll be...
There’s a few different notes on which to retire. There’s the perfect way; for an athlete to go out on their own terms, at a time of their...
I’m as quick, or as culpable, as anyone for lauding the leaps forward women’s sport is making. And it is. Coverage, attendances, financial...
When Simona Halep takes to the court in Miami in the coming days, it’s about more than just tennis, her presence is a reminder of the utter failure...
Media coverage of sport, as we all know, can sometimes head in directions few expected. And a Usain Bolt v Kylian Mbappe war of words was as...
We all knew it was coming, sooner or later. And it’s been confirmed this week, that it’s happening if not soon, then soon-ish. Andy Murray,...
There’s few things that make me want to punch someone in the face more than being called a “good girl”. Unless the person these two words are...
What makes someone Scottish? Or any particular nationality, for that matter? For some, it’s where they were born, for others it’s where they...
As someone who deplores doping in sport, I’d love to say that I have absolutely no interest in the Enhanced Games, which will take place later this...
Almost everyone who’s been striving for greater equality within sport has, over recent years, been quick to laud the progress of women’s sport. ...
It’s been clear for some time that sport is broken. Well, maybe not sport as a whole but, certainly, elite sport is broken. From the endless...
There’s nothing quite like an underdog story. Despite the respect and admiration garnered by the all-time greats of the sporting world and for the...
As a kid, I played badminton – the sport in which I ended up becoming an Olympian – in almost every corner of Scotland. My parents would trail...
As the first tennis grand slam of the year begins, it’s impossible not to glance at the bigger picture. This tennis season is, almost certainly,...
There’s no doubt that a little bit of needle, a touch of controversy and a smattering of personal dislike is a welcome tonic within the sporting...
2023 has been quite a year for Scottish sport outwith the football bubble that so often dominates the headlines. Josh Kerr became world 1500m...
Scotland’s sportswomen have had a quite amazing twelve months. Multiple world champions, a world record and one of the best-ever performances by...
It’s hardly a novel observation to suggest that BBC Sports Personality of the Year has lost its shine. In the 1980s, ’90s and even early 2000s,...