Athletes competing for Scotland at European competitions instead of Great Britain are to be discussed.

Scottish Athletics has taken steps to explore the possibility of competing as an independent nation rather than GB at European competitions.

The sport’s national governing body has written to European Athletics to enquire if the home nations could compete at continental events independently.

This includes the European cross country championships, and the indoor and outdoor championships.

Scottish Athletics chief executive Mark Munro said: “This has been a topic of discussion by home nations and UK Athletics for the past 18 months or so.

“We recently launched our new strategy document entitled Building a Culture of Success. Enshrined within that document is a principle to try and create more opportunities for Scottish athletes to compete as Scotland at European level.

“Our chair, Ian Beattie, and I attended the European Athletics Convention in Lausanne recently and in writing to thank them we asked if the possibility could be explored for Scotland – and England, Wales and Northern Ireland – to compete at the likes of the Euro Cross Country Champs (every year) and the European Champs (indoors and outdoors, every two years).

“The landscape in sport is always changing and there are other models in British sport of Scotland competing at European level and then contributing athletes/players to GB teams – so we will look at how that framework applies, too.”

Are you a fan of Fast Running? Then please support us and become a patreon. For as little as the price of a monthly magazine you can support Fast Running – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.