Why Team Scotland and Not Team GB?

Citation

Haynes R (2014) Why Team Scotland and Not Team GB?. Sport Heritage: From Sporting Past to Future Wellbeing Blog [Blog post] 23.04.2014. https://sportheritage.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/why-team-scotland-and-not-team-gb/

Abstract
Have you ever wondered why Scotland has a separate team in the Commonwealth Games but not the Olympic Games? In many ways we do not consider this unusual. Scotland has national representative teams in most sports. The national football and rugby teams have prolific histories and enormous national support. But in sports such as athletics, cycling, swimming and gymnastics, which all feature in both the Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games, we more often than not associate national representation with Great Britain rather than Scotland. Although nationalist sentiment, identity and values play a large part in any national representational sport, the historical reasons for the Scotland/GB divide are often more politically and administratively driven. The clues as to why Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England have separate identities during Commonwealth sport can be found in the early minutes and letters from the archives of Commonwealth Games Scotland (CGS), the organisation that has run the Scottish team since the 1930s.

People

Professor Richard Haynes

Professor, Communications, Media and Culture