Chris Hoy: Scottish team in Olympics would be 'ridiculous'

ALEX Salmond's hopes of creating a Scottish Olympic team suffered a major setback yesterday when the triple gold medallist Chris Hoy derided the plan as "ridiculous".

The Edinburgh cyclist, who carried the flag for Team GB at the closing ceremony in Beijing, reacted angrily to remarks from Stewart Maxwell, the sports minister, who said "a Scottish team at the Olympics is the future". Scotland's greatest-ever Olympian said he wouldn't have "three gold medals hanging round my neck" if he had not been part of Team GB.

Hoy's comments came amid another row over the idea of a British football team taking part in the 2012 London Games. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said he supported the concept, but it is bitterly opposed by the SNP government in Edinburgh and the Scottish Football Association.

The intervention of someone of Hoy's standing in the debate about Scotland's future in the Olympics is a serious blow to Mr Salmond's drive to create a separate Scottish team.

Last week, the First Minister's spokesman said a Scottish team would allow more Scots to compete at the highest level.

Yesterday, Mr Maxwell said: "Look at Jamaica, a small island nation. They won gold, silver and bronze in the women's sprint, they've got world records, they've won the men's, the women's 100 and 200 metres and the relay. This is an exceptionally brilliant nation – at the same time a small nation.

"Scotland can compete on the world stage – we proved that in the Olympics – and a Scottish team at the Olympics is the future."

Asked what he would say to those who would rather see Scotland's athletes play a big role in Team GB, he said: "What I would say to them is, do Irish athletes want to rejoin the UK and be part of the UK team? Do we want to get rid of the GB team and have a European team because a European team would sweep the board? You have to think about whether or not it's appropriate in the level you represent your own country in. I think it's quite right you represent your own country."

When he asked about those comments in Beijing yesterday, Hoy said: "Before anything like that could be discussed, he'd have to look at the facilities and resources in Scotland. At the moment, we don't have an international facility for cycling. We don't have the coaching or anything else in place.

"For him to call for a Scottish Olympic team at this stage is ridiculous. I wouldn't have three gold medals hanging round my neck if I wasn't part of the British team. I'm a Scottish athlete in a British team, and I'm proud to be a British athlete.

"The government would have to invest serious money in sport before they could start thinking of having their own team in the Olympics."

Hoy is based in Manchester, home of the National Cycling Centre, which has one of only two indoor velodromes in the UK. He is part of a British team funded to the tune of £5.5 million a year. As he pointed out, he also won one of his gold medals as part of a team, together with Englishmen Jamie Staff and Jason Kenny.

He said: "There's nothing I love more than going home to Edinburgh, but I haven't lived in Scotland for nine years. There just aren't the facilities to train there – if there were, then I would live there. But like Craig MacLean and Ross Edgar – who are the other Scottish cyclists on the British team – I have to be based in Manchester."

Simon Clegg, chief executive of the British Olympic Association, attacked Mr Maxwell for raising the issue of a Scottish team again. "This is nothing to do with sport, everything to do with politics," he said. "Only independent nations, as recognised by the international community, can have national Olympic committee status bestowed on them."

He pointed out Scotland would actually have lost two medals – Hoy's from the team sprint and Katherine Grainger's team rowing one – had the country been on its own, because those athletes would not have been competing with their British colleagues.

Frank McAveety, Scottish Labour's sports spokesman, also condemned Mr Maxwell's remarks. He said: "I'm absolutely passionate about Scotland and I want Scotland to do well, but I'm also exceptionally proud of Team GB's performance in the Olympics. I don't see why I should be asked to make a choice between those two."

Hoy's father, David, has spoken out against Scotland going it alone,

and Sir Craig Reedie, the Scot who used to chair the British Olympic Association, said: "Why would Chris Hoy want to leave the best cycling team in the world?"

The proposal has already received a lukewarm response from Scotland's sporting community. A Performance Sports Summit, chaired by Mr Maxwell in Stirling last August, included the Olympic proposal as item two on the agenda. With many of Scotland's sporting governing bodies present, the item received – according to one delegate – "short shrift".

Meadowbank's velodrome, where Hoy learned the skills he used to such devastating effect in Beijing, is still in operation, but is described as being "badly out of date" and is earmarked for demolition. Scotland's only other velodrome, in Dundee, is in an even worse state.

Marco Librizzi, a former team-mate of Hoy, has said that getting rid of the Meadowbank velodrome before a new one opens in Glasgow would kill the chances of having any Scottish cyclists at the Commonwealth Games in 2014. In the light of Hoy's Beijing success, Mr Salmond said Holyrood would look again at the case for improved cycling facilities.

Cycling is not the only sport to suffer from limited facilities in Scotland. Swimming also suffers at elite level due to a lack of dedicated 50-metre pools.

Fun, fun, fun is the theme for 2012 as Boris declares 'sport is coming home'

LONDON will build on the success of Beijing to host "the best Olympic Games ever", Gordon Brown promised yesterday, as the reins of the world's greatest sporting event were officially handed over to the capital.

The Prime Minister said the medal haul of Britain's athletes, who will arrive home today on a special BA Boeing 747 with a "golden" nose, has "captured the imagination of our country".

And in a resolute defence of a united British team, he added: "We can say with one patriot voice, it is a great time to be British."

Speaking at London House in Beijing alongside Mr Brown, Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, made clear that Britain had given the world a great many of the Olympic sports, even pointing out to his Chinese hosts that "ping-pong" has its roots in Victorian England, where it emerged as an after-dinner amusement.

Back in London, thousands of revellers gathered outside Buckingham Palace as part of the celebrations marking the handover of the Olympics from Beijing to London.

As the closing ceremony began in China, a flag-waving crowd some 40,000 strong thronged into the Mall ahead of performances by acts including McFly, Will Young, Katherine Jenkins and the cast of the Queen musical We Will Rock You.

Olympians including Michael Phelps, British medal heroes Bradley Wiggins and Phillips Idowu, and former stars Sharron Davies, Sally Gunnell and Roger Black took part in the event.

Big screens linked up to the ceremony in Beijing where London staged an eight-minute, £2.5 million performance to mark the hand over.

As Jimmy Page, Leona Lewis, and David Beckham took centre stage in Beijing, the organisers of 2012 suggested their aim was to hold a fun Games.

Mr Johnson, who received the Olympic flag, said at the ceremony: "We will draw on our wit, flair, imagination and ingenuity to build on what we've all witnessed in Beijing and deliver a fantabulous Olympics in what I consider to be not only my home, but the home of sport. Sport is coming home."

Wiggins, who won two golds in Beijing, said: "When I left (Britain] it was all 'recession, recession, recession' and we've come back to a country overwhelmed by Olympic success."

Scotland's biggest city joined in the celebrations, as about 2,000 people gathered to watch the handover broadcast live on a giant screen in Glasgow's George Square and see the 2012 flag raised over the City Chambers.

Glasgow, which is hosting the 2014 Commonwealth Games, will be the venue for some football matches at the 2012 Games and is an official Olympic City.

In London, hundreds of people were shut out of the event, despite having tickets.

Mari Hamilton, from Aylesbury, said: "If they can't fit 40,000 people in why did they issue that many tickets?"

There were also technical problems with some of the big screens, meaning the picture was lost for parts of the closing ceremony in Beijing.

In Cumbria, legendary mountaineer Sir Chris Bonnington scaled England's highest mountain, Scafell Pike to unfurl one of the London 2012 flags.

Brown wants all-Britain football team with Sir Alex at the helm

MANCHESTER United boss Sir Alex Ferguson has been approached to manage an all-Britain football team at the 2012 Olympics in London, Gordon Brown said last night, a move which some argue threatens the future of the Scottish national side.

The Prime Minister is determined to see a British team in both the men's and the women's football tournaments when the Games come to the UK. But Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, yesterday attacked Mr Brown's support for a single side.

He said: "This is not a popular idea. Not only do all the national supporters' associations oppose this, but the majority of football associations in the UK have said they do not want to take part in a single UK team."

Cathy Jamieson, one of the Scottish Labour leadership candidates, also said it would be wrong to gamble with the future of the country's football for the sake of a single British Olympic team.

Ms Jamieson said: "Scotland has a long international footballing tradition and I would not do anything to jeopardise that. Team GB should include a football team, but not at the expense of Scotland's football team. It would be wrong to gamble with the identity of Scotland's football team."

Previously, Britain has been prevented from entering because the four home countries compete separately in other international matches.

Mr Brown has been holding talks with Fifa president Sepp Blatter in an attempt to ensure that the right of the autonomy of the home nations is protected if there is a British Olympic team.

Mr Brown said: "We will see who wants to be part of this and then we will get a manager that everybody will be happy with. And I know Alex Ferguson has been approached by Seb Coe, and I have spoken to him about it."

He said the veteran manager had yet to be formally approached for the job and it was "up to him to decide".

Mr Brown said he hoped the lure of a final in London would encourage the individual football associations to overcome their reservations about entering a joint Olympic side.

GAVIN CORDON