Paisley cycling star Jack Carlin believes he won more than medals at this year’s Commonwealth Games.
The double Olympic medal winner sealed a super silver in the keirin on Saturday at the Lee Valley Velodrome, before adding a brilliant bronze in Sunday’s sprint.
The talented 25-year-old was reduced to tears when he took to the podium to collect his sprint medal, having been bumped up to third place after Australian rival Matthew Glaetzer was relegated for an illegal deviation in the deciding leg of their intense battle for bronze.
And Carlin revealed competing for Scotland in Birmingham had helped reignite his love of the sport, which he’d temporarily lost sight of after his incredible performances in Tokyo.
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Carlin said: “It’s not been an easy few months, especially after coming back from the Olympic Games.
“I’ve not really let anyone in on this but I’ve really been struggling with the sport and finding my love for it. I fell out of love with the sport and almost became a robot ticking a box in training.
“I appreciated it so much before the Games and it’s almost taken racing in front of a home crowd a little bit to find my mojo and find my passion and drive to win and compete at the highest level. I’ve had so much support from Scottish Cycling, I owe a lot of my success over the last two days to those guys.
“Training with the Scottish team, I can’t think Scottish Cycling and the Scottish Institute of Sport enough for the support.
“My mojo is coming back to me. I feel like I’ve fallen in love with the sport again. What it has allowed me is to feel the passion again. I feel like the fire has been reignited and I’m excited for the next couple of years.”
Carlin had emptied the tank so much in Sunday’s sprint bronze medal race he almost didn’t realise he’d been promoted to the podium.
He believes it was the right decision in the end to relegate Glaetzer and admits he’s still after that elusive major gold medal.
Carlin explained: “I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t even sure, I was so out of it.
“I was running on fumes at the end.
“It was when they said, ‘Put your podium gear on,’ I thought, ‘What are you talking about?’
“Matthew came over and shook my hand. It’s never nice – but I think it was the right decision.
“He threw me out of my space, knocked me out of my rhythm. It’s not gold, but this whole experience has still been so good.”
Elsewhere at the Lee Valley Velodrome Paisley cycling legend Aileen McGlynn OBE added two more medals to her already massive haul.
In the women’s Tandem B 1000m time trial on Sunday McGlynn and her pilot Ellie Stone delivered when it mattered, adding bronze to the silver they won in the sprint on their opening night.
The pair posted a strong time of 1.07.578, less than half a second away from gold and only 24 thousandths from a silver to secure another trip to the podium.
McGlynn said: “I’m surprised that we did so well as we’ve only been training together for 12 weeks and we’ve never actually done a full kilometre together.
“A huge thanks to Ellie for getting me there.”
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