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."