Jake Wightman, Laura Muir and Eilish McColgan all competed at Glasgow 2014 and are still among the world’s elite as we progress through the summer of 2026. 

There’s a picture that keeps popping up on Jake Wightman’s phone. “It’s of me and Neil Gourley competing at the Scottish Under-18 Championships at Scotstoun,” he says. “We’re first and second and the picture is from 2011. That’s mental, isn't it? It's now 15 years ago, and we're going to be competing again alongside each other, but for a very different spectacle.”

Different, yes, but no less keenly fought. The pair, along with Josh Kerr, will form a Scottish trio going in search of Commonwealth gold against some top-class opposition over the men’s mile in Glasgow and it’s apt for Wightman that he will be racing in one of athletics’ classic events that has such a depth of history. This championships has echoes and connections to his own personal past running right through it. 

The occasion also serves as an illustration of how far he has come and what he has achieved. The last time Wightman stood on the start line at a Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, in 2014, he was the reigning European U20 1500m champion and getting his first taste of competing at a major senior championships.

A lot of miles have been covered since then and this time he arrives with a world title, a world silver, as well as European and Commonwealth medals, safely banked from a career that has already extended beyond what the 31-year-old had expected. 

If it were to all end tomorrow, he would retire happy with his achievements and the next few championships, he says, represent “free hits” at adding to his list of honours. But Wightman is a competitive animal. A championships animal. You don’t get to stick around at the top level for the length of time that he has without having something extra. And he’s not the only member of his team to whom those criteria apply.

He is a member of an elite club of Scottish athletes who competed at those previous Glasgow Games 12 years ago and will now be doing so again at the 2026 edition. His old friends, Laura Muir and Eilish McColgan, injury permitting, can say the same – in their case as reigning Commonwealth champions. 

Wightman has known both for years. He remembers a time from his youth when Eilish’s mother and coach – the former Commonwealth and world 10,000m champion Liz: “Picked me up to take me to the [Scottish] East District Championships. I would have been around 15. I also did the Junior Great North Run once as a kid, and Eilish came past me, so I've known her for a very long time.”

He has nothing but respect for an athlete who has always carried a weight of expectation given her high-achieving parents – her father Peter was an international steeplechaser as well – and hasn’t been afraid to put herself on the line across a variety of events from 800m through to the marathon, winning major medals, breaking records and reaching four Olympics along the way.

“I feel like she's used that as a positive,” Wightman says of the McColgan dynasty. “It definitely means that people know Eilish because they remember Liz and have followed Eilish’s journey from a young age because of it. The range of events that she's been able to be super successful over is the most impressive thing. Going back to 2012, how many people from those Olympics would make this Commonwealth Games? It's a massive, massive career, and she's still got a lot of years that she can keep running so well over the marathon if she wants to as well.”

One of the standout moments of the 2022 Games in Birmingham came when McColgan emulated her mother by winning 10,000m gold, a feat she followed by winning 5000m silver. 

Not mentioned quite so frequently is the fact that Muir also left Birmingham with two medals – 1500m gold and 800m bronze – just a matter of days after having won 1500m bronze at the World Championships in Eugene. 

“I'd have first met Laura in 2013 when we went to Portugal on a Scottish Athletics camp,” says Wightman of the two-time European 1500m champion outdoors, who will be racing over 5000m in Glasgow. “She made her first [British team for the world championships] that year. People sometimes don't give her enough credit, especially when you have Georgia [Hunter Bell] getting medals the last couple of years over 1500m and 800m. You forget that Laura was doing that year after year for a big, big period. And she was doing it in an era where there were, dare I say it, some questionable athletes. 

“It’s also an era where people were just performing outrageously compared to the rest of the field and she was the one that was bridging the gap to them. If you put Laura maybe even five years earlier, she probably would have had a few more wins and even more medals than she has. It was just ridiculous who she was racing against.

“She has still got it in her. It's just that now she's going to have to run quicker than she ever has before, because that's the nature of 1500m. Or perhaps she's got a career over 5000m and that's just a new chapter for her.”

Megan Keith is a fellow member of Team Scotland who currently sits at the other end of the experience scale. The 24-year-old has made it to an Olympic Games and two World Championships but only began the switch cross country to track and road racing four years ago. This will be her Commonwealth debut. But the impact Muir and McColgan have had on her has been profound. When asked about both, there is a certain reverence to her answers.

“I shared a room with Laura at a race recently and she was reminiscing about competing at Glasgow 2014 and I was reminiscing about finishing primary school!” laughs Keith. 

“It’s quite surreal. The first time you'd see them would be on TV and then we were also very lucky to get to see Laura and Jemma [Reekie] operating up close, because they would come to Scottish cross country races. 

“That was quite eye-opening for me, because I would struggle to piece together that these really cool, fast athletes that you're inspired by actually exist. So the fact that they would then turn up to the same races made you realise that they're actually real people.

“I raced Laura at the Scottish short course cross country during my first time in the senior race in 2021 and that transition was just such a surreal experience. I knew she was operating on a completely different level from the rest of us but, being the naive racer I can sometimes be, I still did my best to absolutely take it. It was 4km over two 2km laps, and I think I went absolute eyeballs out on the first lap, then looked over my shoulder and she was still jogging!

“I didn't really know any different, other than to try and beat anyone I was racing into the ground. I wasn’t under any illusions that she was beatable before but you're just so aware that it's a different level to be operating at.”

Keith admits she has witnessed other ways in which Muir has set an example for her, too. 

“I don't think I've necessarily gone seeking advice [from her], but she's just a cool person to have around. I'm sure subconsciously I soaked things up from my first senior world championships on the track in Budapest. Laura was team captain, she did her own race and then just completely threw herself into the captain’s role.

“The 5000m heat was [the morning] after she had raced, so then she was down on the warm-up track in full captain mode. There's always a different vibe based on who is acting in that role, but she made herself available and happy to offer support. My reaction was to get a photo with her but, in hindsight, maybe I should have asked for some advice on how to make it out of the heat!”

And then there’s McColgan, who offered a literal shoulder to cry on when the Olympic 10,000m final that Keith had battled through an ankle injury to reach didn’t go to plan for her in Paris two years ago.

“Whether it's to my detriment or not, I learn by doing and then assessing, but I think it's just really special to have these women as people to look up to, or further down the pathway,” says the European bronze medallist. “Even if I'm not necessarily picking their brains or using them in a mentorship sort of position, I think just being able to see what what could lie ahead is really useful, because it can be easy to get so honed in on where you are, to forget to look up and think about the bigger picture or the steps ahead. They've been there and done it.”

The bigger picture for Keith involves her own level rising to such an extent that she replaced McColgan as European record-holder for 10km earlier this year, trimming a second from her fellow Scot’s mark with a time of 30:07. 

She has been a fast learner since that “half-hearted” attempt to qualify for Birmingham 2022 tempted her on to the track and, just recently, broke the Scottish record for 3000m in Oslo. Yet it doesn’t seem like she’s about to start getting carried away.

“I see Eilish as miles above me,” says Keith, who will race along with McColgan over 10,000m at Scotstoun. “I didn't necessarily see it as breaking one of her records, even though I guess it was a European record. I still have Eilish on a complete pedestal. She's still the top class of world and European road running, so it's a bit funny to have had that record for a very short time. I think I've still got work to do to challenge her.”

Any athlete in a Scottish vest can expect to have the full attention of the crowd at Scotstoun in coming weeks and Keith is intending to enjoy every moment. 

“I think the pressure will be put on externally, and I can't control that, but internally I know that I do my best when I’m as carefree as I can be going into it, which is my natural state,” she says. “You can let an occasion overwhelm you, or you can use it to bring out your best, and that's absolutely what I'll be aiming for. It will be a championships like no other, hopefully.”

It would be no surprise, however, if there’s an extra warmth to the cheers for McColgan, Muir and Wightman as they enjoy one last Commonwealth hurrah. The appreciation shown will be as much for deeds past as what they achieve this time around. Each have their own lessons to teach, but what is the common factor in being able to build an athletics career of such longevity?

“A lot of it comes down to the fact that you’ve got to put your running above anything else,” says Wightman. “That's a big thing. Doing everything you possibly can to be as good as you can be also involves so many boring little bits, and there’s a little bit of luck involved, too, but mentally you've got to have a fire in you that doesn't go out very easily.

“Laura and Eilish have both had periods where you don’t get the success you want, or have summers where you're sidelined or disrupted, and it's how you bounce back through that that I think is a testament to how long you can keep your career going.”

Wightman has also had more than his fair share of injury misery to overcome and, while 2023 world champion Kerr is honing in on a pursuit of the mile world record in London beforehand, the newly-crowned British 800m champion has opted instead to keep himself as fresh as possible for the Commonwealth final that will be staged on the final day of competition. A gold medal, he admits, would be a rather nice parting gift. 

He has two Commonwealth 1500m bronze medals, from 2018 and 2022, and that third place behind Olli Hoare and Timothy Cheruiyot from four years ago still grates. It’s a title he feels was winnable but there were just nine days between Wightman having the win of his life with that world title in Eugene and him lining up for the Commonwealth heats in the West Midlands. The preparation was perhaps less than ideal. 

“I look back and I'm proud that it was a bronze – I could have got nothing from it and at the time I was really relieved to get something – but I also think it would have been nice to have won that,” he says, “And that’s why these Glasgow Games are so important, because it’s my last Commies. It would be nice to go and get a title as well.”

But there’s more to it than that. 

“It’s so cool that we're the ones that represent Scotland, and we are also the ones that make global finals as well,” he adds. “But you don't get the chance to do it very often, so it's a chance to showcase how good a period this is for Scotland. In theory it should be the national sport, almost, because I think if you look at the percentages of medals at global championships from Scottish athletes, surely athletics is ridiculously high compared to any other sport and sometimes I don't think it’s that appreciated. 

“So when you get to go to a Games, it's a chance to actually showcase that and the average viewer who doesn't watch athletics generally can see these Scottish vests. But mainly it’s a chance to give back to what Scotland has done to us. We've been produced by the clubs there and produced by the system, so then it's a chance to give back to that, to say how good a job [they did] around the opportunities we were given as kids to be able to get to the point we're at today.”

In case you were wondering, it was Wightman who came out on top against Gourley, 4:02.21 to 4:03.47, in that 1500m race a decade and a half ago. You suspect another one-two finish at Scotstoun would go down rather well.