Published: Thursday, 24th July, 2008 08:30
All's well for Kelty Athletics coach Margot
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MARGOT'S MASTERCLASS: English rugby star James Haskell gets the benefit of her advice
WHEN the race is held to find the fastest man in the world at the Beijing Olympics next month, many minds in West Fife will drift back to Moscow in 1980 when Scotsman Allan Wells triumphed and the key role played by his wife and coach, Margot, from Kelty.
Nowadays, some of biggest names in English rugby travel to Margot’s training base in Guildford for her expert speed, strength and stamina development techniques.
She too was a top-class athlete but only discovered her talent by accident at the age of eleven, as her favoured pastime was
Highland dancing, where she was a champion.
That determination to succeed drove her on later in athletics as a competitor but even more so as a coach.
Recalling her childhood in Kelty, Margot (50) said, “We had a great time playing around Centre Street where we lived at the time.
“We played kick-the-can and hide-and-seek in the dark with about 20 people where it would take you hours to find them all.
“I never really knew I could run particularly fast until I was 11. We had no P.E. at school but I used to run at galas and works do’s when you all went down to Burntisland.
“I used to win my races but didn’t think anything more about it. Then one day the teacher for some reason decided we were going to have running races in the park. I won the girls competition then beat the best boy.
“Later, I found out there was a pro coach who had seen us and he told my dad that I was the most naturally gifted runner he’d seen.
“My dad asked if I wanted to go to coaching but I said no.”
However, Margot went on to finish third in the Scottish schools championships even with an injury, picked up through not warming up properly.
After that she joined the Pitreavie athletics club but even then she says, “It went along a couple of times a week and we had a good time and a laugh with friends.”
Then she was headhunted by Edinburgh Southern Harriers at 15 and went on to become Scottish schools champion at 17.
In keeping with her ambivalent attitude towards athletics at the time, she responded to reaching that peak by turning her back on the sport again.
By then she was at P.E. teacher training college in Edinburgh and switched her attention to netball.
It was only when she met her boyfriend Allan, then a young long jump hopeful, that she got back involved in athletics.
“I was going along to meetings with Allan and standing getting cold on the sidelines so I thought I might as well be participating.”
Margot went on to become one of Scotland’s top female athletes winning the national championships at 100 metres four years in a row and competing at the 1978 Commonwealth Games where Allan won gold medals, having switched to sprinting two years earlier.
“He had seen somebody who he used to beat was now doing well in sprinting and decided he would make the switch,” Margot explained.
In four years, Allan went from an above average club athlete to the Olympic gold medallist.
“It was quite an achievement when you put it like that. But at the time you just look to improve times, then be selected for Scotland, then get into the Commonwealth Games, then win a medal there, then go for the Olympics.
“It’s a step by step thing and you’re always looking at the next target.”
Allan’s 100 metres Olympic triumph – he also took the silver in the 200 metres – was one of Scottish sports greatest ever moments.
Margot, part of his coaching team, was more nervous than her husband in the build-up to the final.
“He had more control over events whereas there was nothing I could do by then,” she recalled.
Margot famously played her part from the sidelines, roaring Allan on the victory and captured, somewhat sneakily, on film.
“That was something that was planned by the BBC and I knew nothing about it. They had a cameraman using a zoom lens and an interviewer just ‘accidentally’ left his microphone lying switched on.
“I wasn’t happy with the way they went about that but it’s not something I carry about with me.”
In the latter stages of Allan’s career, Margot took full control of his coaching and they moved south to live in Guildford.
After retiring, Allan took on a speed coaching role with the London Scottish rugby team and other sportsmen.
“Allan got involved with a bobsleigh team which was taking up more of his time and I was standing in for him with the rugby players. It’s like most things, it just evolves over time.”
At one point, Margot had enough of coaching but after requests from players such as Derek White and Lawrence Dallaglio and word-of-mouth recommendations, her bookings gradually built up until now when she is not taking on any new clients.
She works with some of English rugby’s top players such as Danny Cipriani, Paul Sackey, James Haskell and Andy Gomersall.
She also works with a small group of young hockey players and athletes including her daughter Zoe, a sprinter.
“She’s just taken it up at the age of 22, which makes coaching more difficult. We must have the late developing gene in our family, as Allan only started sprinting when he was 24.
“Our son Simon, who’s just turned 21, is a phenomenal long jumper but doesn’t like to train. He’s also a phenomenal football player but has only recently started playing regularly.”
These days Allan works as a systems analyst at Surrey University, is a regular at charity golf events and still does some coaching.
However, that role has now very much been taken over by Margot who said, “I work 24/7 and rarely get a day off.”
Her busy schedule has been made even more hectic in recent weeks as Margot has just set up a new business ‘Wellfast’.
She has instructors running courses for teachers, coaches and anyone else involved in sports looking at all aspects of training.
“We do everything from the warming up techniques, to the running, to the weights, to the psychology.
“Allan was the best in the business when it came to psychology when he was running – it would take hours to go into it – and so I’ve learned from the master.”
As part of the courses, Margot gives a talk and summarises the main messages she wants people to take away with them and pass on.
The typically Fife no-nonsense approach which keeps the glamour boys of English rugby in line is perhaps a trait passed on from her late father John, who was a trade union official at the Cowdenbeath mining workshops and later became Labour councillor for Kelty.
Was Margot ever tempted to follow him into politics? “No, I blab too much. I say things like I see them and I would probably be too open to be a politician. Mind you, we used to have a lot of good discussions in the house about politics.”
With another Olympics looming, sports fans will be wondering when, or if, we will ever see another sprint gold brought back to Scotland.
Despite all the money pumped into the sport to allow athletes to train full-time in top class facilities and the introduction of strict diet regimes, there has been little sign of Scots recapturing the glories of the past.
“It’s not about facilities,” said Margot. “I ask people how is it that when Allan won the gold, the only people eating pasta were the Italians and there were no indoor facilities? We were both in full-time jobs. The success was all down to hard work.”
Margot’s sister Maureen still lives in Kelty and she also has a sister Jeanette who lives in Thornton.
“It’s really hard to get up to see them because of work but I’m going to have to just say I’m taking a weekend off and come up to see them,” she promised.
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