Hawick runner Thomas MacAskill celebrating hat-trick of wins at two Highland games meetings at weekend

The 19-year-old won over 800m and 1,600m at Oldmeldrum Sports and Highland Games in Aberdeenshire on Saturday and over 800m at Aberdeen’s games on Sunday.

His winning times over 800m were 2:10 and 2:11 but no time was given for his victory over a mile at Oldmeldrum.

Ewan Bradley, of Inverness, was runner-up in both 800m races and Dave Tivindale over the mile.

That made it four wins in eight days for the teenager, a member of his hometown’s Teviotdale Harriers athletics group, as he also finished first over 3,200m at Strathmore Highland Games in Angus on Sunday, June 11.

MacAskill is glad to get back to winning ways after making a wobbly start to the new season and is now targeting matching his tally of 15 victories last summer, saying: “I ran at Strathmore, Markinch and Helensburgh before those two meetings at the weekend but I didn’t do well at all.

“The tracks up here aren’t anything like the ones in the Borders. The grass can be so long and the corners so tight and the tracks are sometimes short and sometimes long. They never seem to be 100% accurate.

“That’s me got four wins in eight days now, though, so I’m buzzing.

"Those were all of the distance races available on the Highland games circuit at the weekend, so essentially I sweeped up all 100% of them.

“This time last year I was on three wins as I’d just won at Selkirk, so I’m hoping to match last year’s number of wins by the time I leave.

“I think I was running better at this time last year but when I get a few more weeks’ worth of races under my belt, I should be running a lot quicker. I’d say I’ll be at a similar level to what I was at last year before too long.”

MacAskill is going to have to cut short his summer season this year as he’s off to the USA in mid-August to take up a track and field scholarship studying sports psychology at Central Arizona College near Coolidge after completing a higher national diploma in sports coaching and development at Borders College in Galashiels.

Looking back over his weekend’s work, he added: “The 800m at Oldmeldrum was very tactical and I only just won it from Ewan Bradley on the line after he’d passed me with 250 metres to go, but I won more comfortably at Aberdeen, with Ewan coming second again.”

Next on his agenda, he thinks, will be Kelso Border Games on Sunday, July 2, and he’s also considering having a crack at Jedburgh’s games on Saturday, July 8.