Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

Athletics: Inverness discus prospect George Evans not ruling out Tokyo Olympics bid following road crash escape

George Evans throws the 16lb stone at Aboyne Highland Games. Picture by Colin Rennie
George Evans throws the 16lb stone at Aboyne Highland Games. Picture by Colin Rennie

Great Britain international George Evans has recovered from injuries sustained earlier this month in a road accident and is now back in full training.

The Inverness Harriers club member, who is one of Scotland’s top young shot and discus specialists, is currently based at Kansas University, where he is on a sports scholarship while studying for an economics degree.

Evans has an eye on representing Great Britain in this summer’s European championships and has not ruled out bidding for Olympic selection. So he was relieved to have escaped relatively unscathed from the collision.

He said: “I was unfortunately involved in a car accident which ended up with both cars involved being written off.  However, I am alright. I had some bruising down my entire right side, but other than that I was completely OK and I’m training again.”

Evans, who celebrated his 23rd birthday earlier in the week, is now planning for the summer season, assuming lockdown restrictions are relaxed and major competitions return.

His preparations have not been hampered too much by the pandemic and he is relatively happy with the progress being made.

George Evans throws the 16lb stone at Aboyne Highland Games. Picture by Colin Rennie

He said: “There have been a lot of changes to the way things are done here in Kansas. There is, of course, the mandatory mask-wearing, but it hasn’t really had a huge effect on the way we train. I am still training twice a day and have been since I got back from the UK in the summer.

“However, so far as competitions are concerned, there seems to be a bigger change. It looks like we are having roughly the same number of competitions this winter, but there will be fewer universities taking part.

“As far as I know, we still have the conference championships in February, which is the main competition for me during the indoors season.”

Looking towards the summer, Evans admits Olympic selection in the discus might be a step too far at this stage in his career, but he is determined to give it a good go.

He was unable to compete outdoors in 2020 because of the widespread cancellation of track and field meetings, so his best discus throw of 59.84m dates back to 2019.

He said: “Olympic selection is going to be hard to achieve as the qualifying distance has been increased from previous years and is now 66m.

“I have it at the back of my head as a goal, but I am not making it one of my main goals as I feel like it might just be out of reach this season, but you never know.

“I am just going to keep training as hard as I can and keep focussed on improving my technique throughout the rest of the winter season and come out ready for outdoors and see what I can do in the run-up to the British Championships.”