LIZ McCOLGAN-NUTTALL has lifted the lid on the heartfelt family ultimatum which has set her daughter Eilish McColgan back on course for the Rio Olympics. The Scottish distance legend, who doubles as the 25-year-old's coach, revealed yesterday that she was forced to stage an intervention of sorts to steer her away from pursuing her preferred event, the 3,000m steeplechase.
Twice within seven months, the rigours of that punishing discipline had seen her sustain painful fractures of the foot, the time away from the sport causing her UK funding to be removed and causing her to be evicted from the athletes' house in Loughborough. As painful - both physically and metaphorically as it all was - it may just have been a catalyst, though, for Eilish to finally make good on her undoubted potential.
Since switching to the flat, the 2012 Olympian now has two Olympic 'A' qualifying standards in the 5,000m under her belt. She now requires only a top two finish in the British trials next month to rubber stamp her passport for the games in Rio, even if she has Scottish rivals Steph Twell and Laura Whittle for company. Somewhat amazingly, her mum - speaking at the launch of the Stirling Scottish Marathon, a new event operated by the Great Run company which will debut in May 2017 - reckons she can still be "a better athlete" than she was.
"It was really hard to tell her she wasn’t doing the steeplechase again," said McColgan-Nuttall, the former World Championship gold and Olympic silver medalist at 10,000m. "She was adamant that she was. My thing was ‘if you do the steeplechase again then I don’t coach you’. That’s how it went.
"I was very confident she could be a good 5k and 10 k runner," she added. "I had no problem with that at all. But for Eilish it was hard for her to get her head around it. There’s no way her foot could stand up to the impact of jumping, there was no safe to say it would even withstand the impact of running. There were a lot of tears, a lot of hard work. It was difficult to watch as a coach because you're balancing a lot of emotion you don’t want an athlete to see.
"But she knows it’s the right decision now. It’s been a long and hard road but she realises she can be world class if not better at 5k. Eilish can be a better athlete than I was. She’s a very determined young lady."
If McColgan does make it onto the start line in Brazil, her story will be one of success against the odds. "She wants to be in Rio, she can’t do it one way so she’s going to do it another," says McColgan-Nuttall. "We sat down, we made a plan. She’s had no support. She got kicked off the lottery funding and got kicked out the athletes’ house in Loughborough.
"She’s done it the hard way. She’s in Manchester now, she’s put the hard work in. But she got to go to Kenya which was a big help, and she got to go to Flagstaff which was a massive turnaround for her. She responds really well to altitude so to get access to those camps was a massive help.
"She’s only able to run once a day, she can’t train twice a day. So to get to the level she has is pretty amazing. I'm pretty convinced that once we get this year out the way, she can train twice a day next year and she will do something special. I couldn’t have been any more proud of what she’s done now. To see what she’s gone through to be were she’s at, getting to the Olympics isn’t as important to me as it is to her I’m just happy she’s healthy, she’s back running and I believe she’s a very talented runner."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here