Central AC athletes were back in indoor championship action after a two year absence with the return of the Scottish Senior and Under-17 Championships at the Emirates Arena, Glasgow. And they had cause to celebrate with two medals and some new best performances.

In the Under-17 event Ruairidh Burns opened the day with an excellent silver in the Long Jump. Ruairidh was sitting in fifth place going into the final round with a best jump of 5.41 metres. But it was a close contest for the medals and he showed grit as he hit his final jump right to improve to a season’s best 5.59m to move up into second place for the silver medal. He continued onto the 400 Metres and having qualified for the final in 56.27s ran 55.82s for sixth place in the final.

Aaliyah McCloud was moving up to the Under-17 age group after winning the Scottish Under-15 300 Metres title last summer in a championship record. She eased through her 300 Metres heat winning comfortably in 42.59s. In the final she found herself in fourth place as the athletes broke on the back straight. She fought hard to get up to third but couldn’t quite catch the front runners in a tight finish where only 0.3s separated the medallists. However, she can still be proud of a bronze medal in an indoor best time of 41.48s.

Twin sister Mica McCloud was back in action in the 60 Metres after an injury lay off last summer. She won her heat in 8.23s then ran a personal best 8.12s in the semi-final to qualify for the final. In the final she went even faster with another best of 8.10s for fifth. With the top two places going to an English and an Irish athlete this made Mica the third placed Scot.

Jamie Oldham was in action in the 800 Metres and took 3 seconds off his personal best with a time of 2:15.04 minutes for a respectable 13th quickest on the day.

With Covid restrictions wiping out the senior endurance programme, Ian Horsburgh was our only senior athlete taking part. Ian is an experienced athlete in the masters category and has competed for Great Britain at the European masters championships. He showed he can still hold his own with the younger athletes as he went round the indoor track in a superb 22.50s to qualify for the final. Unfortunately, he sustained an injury in the final and was unable to finish but his 22.50s heat time is the fastest in the world this year by an athlete in the M40 masters category.