Role models Laura Muir and Jemma Reekie spur triathlon teen to new heights

Reekie retains the junior crown as a precursor to the Under-23 gold she captured last weekend – for another four days anyway. With this summer’s European Under-20 Championships beginning today in Boras, Sweden, her teenage colleague will hope to keep the prize in the Young fold.

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Wallace had a proven pedigree before she joined Young’s set-up last winter. European Youth bronze, plus a Commonwealth Youth Games title. No one-trick pony, her achievements in triathlon are even more formidable with a silver at junior level at last year’s world championships on Australia’s Gold Coast. Too callow for Tokyo 2020, she has been earmarked as one to follow for Paris’ Olympics in 2024.

Yet the rigours of juggling three distinct disciplines on a twin sporting track persuaded her to postpone university while long-time comrades packed up and departed her former base at the Giffnock North club. “There weren’t that many girls around my age,” she reflects. Keen to look for strength in numbers elsewhere, there was a logical switch available. Best of all, it was even closer to home.

Reekie and fellow Young protege Kerry Macangus were already acquaintances. “But not as part of that group,” she reveals. “But I asked Mark Pollard of Scottish Athletics for Andy’s email and I sent him a message. We met up and spoke about training and what I’d done so far. He told me to come to a session that night and we took it from there.”

Young, for all his affability, demands much. The fit felt right, within the ecosystem that she has constructed to run quickly but also to hone swimming and cycling to the max.

“Andy’s group has a lot of people to look up to as well, like Jemma and Laura, and it’s good to see how they perform and learn off what they do,” Wallace says.

Reekie has become Wallace’s rabbit to chase, with Muir a few steps ahead, but also able to offer an insight here and there.

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“[Laura]’s just so down to earth,” the teen says. “You wouldn’t think she was this big athlete. She’s just a normal person until she starts running and then she’s super-human. I didn’t appreciate it before but now I can see at first hand how good she is.

“It’s quite good, even if I’m at the back, to see how far ahead Laura and Jemma are just now because Jemma is to me what Laura is to her. She’s where I’d like to be next.”

Wallace will be among the first of an eight-strong Scottish contingent in action in Sweden in this afternoon’s heats, with Sunday’s final the initial target. While Stephen Mackenzie and Alessandro Schenini open up today in the long jump while Sarah Calvert goes in the 800m heats.

There is a tradition now for Wallace to uphold, but she remains undaunted.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says with a laugh. “And because everyone in the group is getting faster and faster, that makes me want to improve my personal best as well. I did a pb in the 800[m] last Wednesday so I know I’m in shape.”

Meanwhile, Guy Learmonth will miss this weekend’s Diamond League meeting in London after contracting salmonella, with the Borderer forced to sit out by British Athletics.

However 800m rival Kyle Langford has been allowed to compete despite being punished for an ugly confrontation with an official at last month’s BMC Grand Prix in Watford. The Commonwealth Games medallist was handed a written warning, a £1000 fine and a day’s community service but escaped a ban.