Sport in Scotland
Scots, and Scottish immigrants, have made several key contributions to the history of sport, with important innovations and developments in: golf, curling, football, rugby union (the invention of rugby sevens, first international, and first league system), Highland games (which have contributed to the evolution of modern athletics events), shinty (the predecessor of both ice hockey and bandy), cycling (Kirkpatrick Macmillan invented the pedal bicycle), and water polo (first set of rules, games and internationals).
Some of these local games were probably played as far back as the Middle Ages,[citation needed] although the earliest contemporary accounts (as opposed to decrees simply banning "football") come in the eighteenth century.
The national team last attended the World Cup in France in 1998, but finished last in their group stage after defeats to runners-up Brazil and Morocco.
Their victory is an important one in football history with the competition being won with a team comprising no players born more than thirty miles (48 km) from the home of the club, Celtic Park.
Scottish players are also eligible for selection for the British and Irish Lions, a composite team that tours the Southern hemisphere every 4 years.
[11][12] Scotland finished top of Group C in the 2013 Rugby League World Cup progressing ahead of Tonga and Italy but losing to New Zealand 40–4.
[13][14] The top tier of the domestic game in Scotland is the semi-professional Scottish National League currently features teams including the Aberdeen Warriors, Easterhouse Panthers, Edinburgh Eagles and the Strathmore Silverbacks.
Shinty also has the honour of having provided, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the world's most successful sporting team, Kingussie Camanachd.
Scotland has a very long successful history of ice hockey, and it is the third most attended team sport in the country after association football and rugby union.
[20] One of Lumsden's students, Rosabelle Sinclair, established the first women's lacrosse team in the United States was at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, Maryland.
At Youth level Scotland has the top female player in World V2 in Meghan Plummer, who also plays her Rock-It-Ball with the Falkirk Cannons.
Although elite-level curlers have been assisted significantly by funding from the National Lottery, facilities at the grassroots level have not benefited from this, with the number of ice rinks offering curling in Scotland declining from 31 in 1993 to 22 in 2018.
The following teams play Gaelic football in Scotland: Dálriada, Dúnedin Connollys, Glaschu Gaels, Sands MacSwineys, and Tír Conaill Harps.
The traditional forms of hurling played in Counties Antrim and Donegal, where many of Scotland's Irish immigrants originate from, were closest to Scottish shinty, and were at one point almost indistinguishable.
Point-to-point racing over jumps for amateur riders takes place at Overton in Lanarkshire and at Friars Haugh and Mosshouses in the Borders.
The nation has eight clubs registered with the British Octopush Association and regular sees native born players compete for Great Britain.
Water polo is considered to be invented in Scotland with the original rules being written by William Wilson for the Bon Accord Club in Aberdeen in 1877.
Scotland's early successes in Formula One began with Innes Ireland, the Dumfries man winning Lotus’ first Grand Prix, at Watkins Glen in 1961.
Other recent successes include Bathgate's Paul di Resta who drove for Force India between 2010 and 2013 and Oban's Susie Wolff who in 2014 became the first woman to take part in a Formula One race weekend in 22 years, at the British Grand Prix, at Silverstone.
He retired with 31 victories from 265 starts in American open-wheel racing, a tally which put him in a tie for ninth place on the all-time wins list.
His ‘flat-out’ driving style earned him millions of fans around the world and he enjoyed cult status during his 15-year career at the top of the sport.
From a humble back-street mews garage in Merchiston, Edinburgh the team stunned the motor racing world by beating household names such as Porsche and Ferrari.
In 1956, David Murray's team won the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race with a privately entered D-type Jaguar, driven by Scotsmen Ron Flockhart and Ninian Sanderson.
Dumfrieshire's Allan McNish competed in F1 in 2002 for Toyota, but is best known for becoming one of the all-time greats in the gruelling world of sportscar racing, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times and finishing on the podium on no fewer than six further occasions.
Peter Dumbreck has also competed in the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, and is better known for his infamous accident in the 1999 event where his Mercedes-Benz CLR car suffered aerodynamic problems and took off, somersaulting through the air.
In 2012, Bathgate's Marino Franchitti was confirmed as the first driver of Nissan's innovative DeltaWing as an unclassified entrant at Le Mans and in 2014 he won the 12 Hours of Sebring.
A number of drivers have raced successfully in recent years including Anthony Reid, David Leslie and Gordon Shedden, who won the championship in 2012.
Jock Taylor took the Sidecar World Championship in 1980 and Jimmy Guthrie and Bob McIntyre both set the standard for Scottish motorcycle competitors on either side of the war.
In recent years Stuart Easton continues the charge for Scotland in the British Superbikes, while John McPhee promotes the Scots abroad, running in the highly competitive Spanish Moto3 class.
In 2009 and 2010 teams from Scotland competed to medal results in the International Six Days Enduro and in each of the same years Scottish riders successfully finished the gruelling Dakar Rally as the first Scots to do so.
