Scottish Sports Hall of Fame

Thomson Runs for Home - December 2003

Some 78 years after leaving his home in Glasgow for the USA, Major League baseball star Bobby Thomson returned to Scotland this week to the Royal Museum, Edinburgh to take up his place in the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame. Known as ‘The Staten Island Scot’, Thomson is best remembered for hitting baseball’s most famous home run, now enshrined in history as the ‘shot heard round the world’. 

Thomson will join 13 other Scottish sporting legends at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh tonight (5 December 2003), where Frank McAveety MSP, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, will make the presentations at the 2003 induction ceremony for the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame (SSHOF). The project, now in its second year, is being developed through a unique partnership between the National Museums of Scotland and sportscotland.

Commenting, Frank McAveety said: “Scottish Sports Hall of Fame aims to honour Scotland’s sporting heroes past and present and inspire participation of the nation’s future champions. We recognise that high‑performance athletes influence the young and young at heart to lead a more active life and to strive for excellence.

“Participation in sport at any level offers every individual so much.  It helps improve the long-term health and well-being of our nation and will provide a stronger pool of talent to nurture future world-class performances. 

“The Scottish Executive and sportscotland are fully committed to achieving international sporting success and helping our current and future high performing athletes reach and maintain their goals.”

This partnership between sportscotland and the National Museums of Scotland will show Scotland’s sporting heritage over the past 200 years to new generations and I am delighted to endorse their efforts.”

Sports Halls of Fame are an internationally recognised way of acknowledging past performers, promoting excellence in sport and instilling sport as a key part of a nation's culture. By providing a public record of Scotland’s greatest sports men and women, the Hall aims to inspire younger generations and promote a culture of Scots recognising and celebrating Scottish success across a range of sports.

Following last November’s inaugural induction ceremony when the first 50 sporting personalities including the legendary Captain Robert Barclay Allardice, famous for his amazing walking feats, formula 1 racing driver Jackie Stewart, sprinter Allan Wells and swimmer David Wilkie entered into the Hall of Fame, a further 14 acclaimed performers have been nominated by the SSHOF’s independent selection panel to join them.

The list of inductees has representatives from 12 sports spanning nearly 140 years of Scottish sporting achievement.

The earliest sportsman to be recognised is Old Tom Morris, one of golf’s founding fathers who won four Open Championships between 1861 and 1867. He now joins his son, Young Tom Morris, who was inducted last year. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the most recent of the inductees is Britain’s most successful cyclist in professional stage races, Robert Millar who was fourth in the Tour de France and King of the Mountains in 1984.

Congratulating the 2003 inductees, Alastair Dempster, Chairman, sportscotland said: “Looking down this impressive list of 14 sporting greats it is clear that our country has much to shout about and the creation of a Scottish Sports Hall of Fame provides an excellent means of communicating our proud history and promoting future Scottish success.

“As the national agency for sport in Scotland, sportscotland are delighted
to be working in partnership with the National Museums of Scotland to deliver this on-going testimony to Scotland's proud sporting heritage and culture. Sport is a passionate field and it is the nature of halls of fame that they excite debate, argument and controversy. These are to be welcomed, especially if Scots are encouraged to get more involved in sport and to cherish even more the vital role played by sport in Scottish culture.”

Dr Gordon Rintoul, Director of the National Museums of Scotland, said: “I am excited to announce that the fundraising campaign for the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame, launched by HRH The Princess Royal only a year ago, is now more than half way towards target. Our supporters from both overseas and here in the UK are keen to assist National Museums of Scotland and sportscotland honour Scotland’s sporting heroes and heroines. I am confident that we will create a hall of fame within the Museum of Scotland of which everyone can be proud.“

“The fundraising campaign for the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame was launched exactly a year ago by HRH The Princess Royal. The target to be raised to create the permanent Hal of Fame within the Museum of Scotland is £300,000 and already we have passed the half-way mark.

It is hoped that the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame will be open by 2006.

LIST OF INDUCTEES 2003

Tom Morris – Golf

Wyndam Halswelle - Athletics

Jimmie Guthrie – Motorsport

Jessie Valentine – Golf

Bobby Thomson – Baseball

Gordon Smith – Football

Helen Elliot Hamilton – Table Tennis

Hamish MacInnes – Mountaineering

Elenor Gordon – Swimming

John McNiven – Weighlifting

George Kerr – Judo

George McNeill – Athletics

Finlay Calder – Rugby

Robert Millar – Cycling