Ex-Peebles rugby player Louis Whyte continuing to make jumps forward in athletics career

Peebles-based athletics and netball coach Linda Nicholson knows talent when she sees it and she made a note of Whyte’s name as he collected a silver medal for 60m and bronze for 200m back in 2022 and later sought out the youngster from her home-town and had a word.

“Louis stood out as a raw talent,” she told us. “He was very rough around the edges in track and field terms, but after a few sessions on the track, I knew he was someone who I could work with and get the very best from.

“Louis was determined and did not shy away from hard work.”

The 19-year-old’s path to elite-level athletics is as good an example as any of how talent isn’t always developed in a straight, mapped-out line of progress and can simply surface via grasping opportunities.

He recalled: “I first got into athletics at high school in Peebles and trained at Innerleithen with the Leithenburn club, but that folded and I didn’t do any athletics for a couple of years.

“I then did the school sports day and a PE teacher suggested I enter the Scottish schools indoors championships and I thought ‘why not give it a bash?’.

“I had no training and an old pair of spikes that didn’t fit but I went to the Emirates and ended up with two medals.”

Whyte’s family moved to Peebles from Stonehouse, just south of Glasgow, when he was young. He joined the town’s Kingsland Primary School in primary two and later went on to Peebles High School.

With a great-grandfather that played football professionally and Scottish cross-country age-group champions in twin aunts Gillian Sage and Carol Perry, he had some family pedigree in sport, and he went on to progress through the ranks at rugby with Peebles Piranhas, going on to represent the town at youth and senior levels as a winger, with his pace proving particularly useful at sevens, and he also played football until the team he was with folded.

His athletics career then began to flourish, however, after Nicholson took him under her wing and put him through his paces at long, triple and high jump, as well as sprint training.

Aged just 15, he won at long jump and triple jump at 2023’s Scottish Athletics under-17s championships, and over the next two years he would take his long jump personal best from 6.3m to 7.21, winning Scottish titles on the way for Edinburgh Athletic Club.

He then left school for Loughborough University and went on to win long jump silver at 2025’s British Universities and Colleges Sports Championships in Manchester and compete at England’s under-20 championships.

Whyte made the decision in December to drop an international business degree at university to free up more time for athletics training, and though a knee injury cut short his indoor season this year, support from Scottish Borders Council’s athlete support programme has enabled him to continue on an upwards trajectory.

He continues to work with Nicholson but remains based south of the border in Leicestershire for now, so his daily coaching is delivered by former Polish high jumper Lukasz Zawila.

“The benefit of dropping out of the degree course is that I can train like a professional athlete five days a week down here, and I’m absolutely loving it,” he said.

“We’ve got a lot of boys my age in the training group, competing at a good level, so it’s enjoyable.

“Calum Henderson, from Edinburgh, for example, who was at Loughborough, won the Scottish senior indoors and only beat me by three centimetres, and he got to the British indoors in Birmingham.

“I opened my indoor season with a personal best and that cemented in my brain that I am in a good place.

“I was unlucky to get an injury, but now I’m looking forward to the outdoor season.”

Whyte was unaware that he is following in the footsteps of another Borderer in Darren Ritchie, the former Galashiels Academy pupil who became the first Scot to leap past eight metres and still holds the Scottish record of 8.01m, set back in 2004.

Ritchie competed in two Commonwealth Games and has coached jumps for Scottish Athletics and their UK and England opposite numbers.

Whyte is targeting jumping beyond 7.5m this year, which would move him into Scotland’s top three, and while the Commonwealth Games are not yet on his horizon, qualifying for that and the Olympics in coming years are his ambitions.

“It would have been great to have been at the games in Glasgow this year, but I’m still only 19, so I’ve got plenty more to look forward to,” he added.

“The current aim is to take up my PB and get to the British championships and just see how I go in my first year in senior athletics, but, yes, the ambition is there to go as far as I can – and I’ve definitely got good-fitting spikes now!”