Michael Wright, organizer of the Monument Mile Classic, on attracting big names to central Scotland, the challenges of running the event and why athletics needs a collective change in mindset.
What brings Cooper Thierry, the training partner of 2022 US 1,500-meter champion and Olympic gold medalist Cole Hawker, to a university track in central Scotland on a chilly evening in late August? Opportunity, basically. But also being well groomed, being able to go racing in a new place and interact with a new kind of crowd.
“It just looked like a super fun event,” Thier said AW: Following the recent edition of the Monument Mile Classic, a packed program of classic distance races at the University of Stirling, which is sure to repeat the 10th night at Highgate and grow in both stature and reputation.
“My younger self would have killed to come to something like this and come face to face with the athletes I looked up to. It’s important in all corners of athletics to be inspired and to be around an event like this and a community like this that seems to know that their race has been great.”
The event’s tagline is “bring the fire,” given the jets of fire that are launched at the start and end of the run. Confirmation for meeting director Michael Wright that it was indeed appealing came when he saw Thier attracting crowds of autograph hunters after the American broke the meeting record in the ‘A’ race, where 11 men ran under four minutes.
One of them was Andrew McGill from Cambuslang, the 20-year-old Scottish 1500m champion, who cut almost seven seconds off his mile PB to finish 9th in 3:55.89.
Laura Muir presents the awards
“My dad and I like to look at people’s progress, so we looked at Jake Wightman and at 20 he was running around 3:41 (for 1500m) and then he got into the diamond league in Glasgow and out of nowhere. ran 3:35,” he says.
“I don’t have that Diamond League to participate in, but Michael created this massive event that gave athletes the opportunity that Jake got all those years ago. I was just happy to get that opportunity to show what I can do in such a field.”
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