Meet 10 of Scotland’s unsung sporting heroes

Scotland has had its fair share of unexpected sporting successes over the years.

Here, we celebrate ten of the most obscure and least-known Scottish champions.

1. Stone skimming, haggis hurling and tiddlywinks

The World Stone Skimming Championships has seen eight overall Scottish world champions since the year 2000. In 2016, the Haggis Hurling champion and world record holder is Lorne Coltart (pictured) from Blair Atholl, who threw a haggis 217 feet. The tiddlywinks long jump world record is currently held by Ben Soares of the St Andrews Tiddlywinks Society, who squidged a wink 9.52 metres in 1995.

2. Rose Reilly

Rose started her footballing career at the age of seven when she joined Stewarton United, and after many successes with various teams, she moved to French professional ladies’ club Reims. After six months, Reilly moved to ACF Milan where she stayed for four years as captain, and then continued to play for Italian teams until she retired at the age of 40 with eight Serie A league titles, four Italian cups and a Women’s World Cup victory in 1984
under her belt. In 2007 she was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame and the SFA Football Hall of Fame.

3. Leslie Balfour-Melville (1854-1937)

Leslie Balfour-Melville led Scotland’s cricket team to a historic victory at The Grange in Edinburgh. The one-day match took place on 29 July 1882 and saw Scotland beat Australia by seven wickets. Balfour-Melville was opening batsman and wicket-keeper, but also played international rugby, was Scottish champion at tennis, ice skating, curling, long jump and billiards, and won golf’s amateur championship.

4. Jessie Valentine (1915-2006)

As well as winning the British Ladies’ Golf title twice, Jessie Valentine was the winner of national championships in both France and New Zealand. She was the Scottish Ladies’ Champion of golf six times, and was selected seven times for the Great Britain and Ireland Curtis Cup team. She is described as Britain’s ‘most outstanding lady golfer’, a position which she held for more than 20 years. She is an inductee in the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame and she made her mark as the first woman ever to receive an MBE for her services to golf.

5. Scotland’s Elephant Polo World Champions

Scotland’s national elephant polo team were world champions for two years running in 2004 and 2005. The team was captained in Thailand on each occasion by the Duke of Argyll who said at the time that due to Scotland’s success in the sport, ‘surely elephant polo must be an event at the 2012 Olympics’. Elephant polo sees competitors carry a 10-foot cane with a polo mallet on the end. Each elephant carries a competitor and a mahout to steer his giant mount.

6. Charlie Barr (1824-1911)

Charlie Barr from Gourock captained three boats to victory in the America’s Cup: the Columbia in 1899 and 1901, and the Reliance in 1903. However, he was best known as skipper of the schooner Atlantic with which he won the Kaiser’s Cup transatlantic race, setting a new racing record of 12 days, 4 hours, 1 minute and 19 seconds despite horrendous conditions, a record that stood for 75 years. Barr was inducted into the America’s Cup Hall of Fame in 1993 and the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011.

 

7. Scotland’s Homeless World Cup Champions

August 2011 saw the Scotland team achieve its second success in the Homeless World Cup, a football tournament that aims to end homelessness. Scotland played against Mexico in the final in Paris, winning with a 4-3 victory and receiving the trophy for the second time Their first success in 2007 saw the team win with a 9-3 victory over Poland in Copenhagen. The UEFA-backed championship involved 64 international teams and over 300 matches.

8. Bobby Thomson (1923-2010)

Bobby Thomson, nicknamed ‘the Staten Island Scot’, was a Glasgow-born professional American baseball player. The highlight of his career was a home run known as ‘the shot heard round the world,’ which sealed a 5-4 victory for the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers and won them the National League pennant.  The team’s unexpected success was later discovered to be helped by a secret buzzer wire that allowed them to interpret what the opposition’s next ball would be. Thomson denies that he knew what his pitch would be. He was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.

9. Kenneth Grant Macleod (1888-1967)

MacLeod excelled in rugby, cricket, football, athletics and golf. Records show that he was longjump champion of Scotland. He is widely regarded as the best Scottish all-round sportsman of his generation, being first capped for Scottish rugby at the age of 17. He later turned to cricket instead, becoming captain of Lancashire County Cricket Club at the same time as playing football for Manchester City. MacLeod was inducted into the
Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.

10. Helen Elliott Hamilton (1927-2013)

Helen Elliott Hamilton took up table tennis when she was 16 and, just three years later, in 1946, she won the first of 13 consecutive Scottish Open Women’s Singles titles. She also won the Irish Open Women’s Singles title in the same year. In 1947 she played in the 14th World Championships in Paris, but she didn’t win until the 16th World Championships in Stockholm in 1949, where she won the World Women’s Doubles title, which she went on to retain the following year. Elliot Hamilton was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.

This feature first appeared in 2016.