Homecoming 2009 - A Sporting Feast For Scotland
Scotland is known the world over as the home of golf, but this year, more than any other, the country will be the focus of global attention as sportsmen and women arrive to take part in a huge array of international events and competitions. Add to that domestic tournaments in sports like soccer and shinty, full of colour and passion, and there’s no better place to experience top class sport than Scotland in the Year of Homecoming.
Global Gathering For Golf
Of all the major events in world golf, none are as big as the British Open. And this year’s championship is being held at one of the toughest locations imaginable. The coastal course, or links, at Turnberry in Ayrshire offers a real challenge to the skills of players like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickleson and Ernie Els. Every one of the eighteen holes is testing. With narrow fairways to drive the ball on, fringed with thick gorse bushes and treacherous sand traps and with the sea always in range, Turnberry is breathtakingly beautiful. This is the fourth time the Open has been held here and the course is remembered for the epic 1977 “Duel in the Sun” play-off between Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus.
Turnberry is within easy reach of Glasgow International and Glasgow Prestwick airports with good rail and road links. The Open takes place between 16 and 19 July, but arrive early to secure the best vantage points and to walk the course like the professionals.
Best Ball Games on Earth
If team sports are more to your taste you are in for a treat. This year the Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup, the oldest national trophy in the world, has been renamed the Homecoming Scottish Cup. The qualifying rounds started as far back as Autumn 2008 but the tournament will come to a fantastic finale on Saturday 30 May when the last two teams take to the field at the National Stadium, Hampden Park, in Glasgow. This great old ground once accommodated more than 140,000 tightly packed spectators. These days the capacity is around 55,000, and the facilities are rated as amongst the best in the world. If you can’t get a ticket, or won’t be in Scotland at the time, then join a global television audience that in 2008 reached millions of fans in more than 40 countries.
Homecoming Year has also attracted the cream of rugby to Scotland for three scintillating tournaments involving three different forms of the sport. In early May Rugby League’s Magic Weekend descends on Edinburgh with a full round of super-league fixtures taking place in the city’s Murrayfield Stadium.
The rugby theme continues later in the month when, on May 23, Edinburgh hosts the final of the Heineken Cup. It is the most prestigious tournament for Europe’s elite 24 rugby union club sides. The last time it was in Edinburgh, in 2005, more than 67,000 fans saw French side Toulouse triumph.
A shorter form of the game of rugby, involving seven rather than fifteen players, was invented in Scotland more than a century ago. “Sevens” is fast, furious and hugely exciting. And to end a fabulous month for Edinburgh, the final round of the Sevens World Series will take place in the city in the last weekend in May. A great chance to see some top class action involving the likes of Hong Kong, South Africa, New Zealand, England and – of course – Scotland.
World’s Top Wheels
In the opening weekend of June the West Highlands is the place to be for the best in biking, with the town of Fort William transformed for the Nissan UCI Mountain Bike World Cup. Individual, team and national team events involving around 400 competitors from more than 30 countries take place in some of the most majestic scenery and tricky terrain anywhere on the global circuit. It has been called the “greatest gravity gathering on earth”.
In late November top class motor sport returns to Scotland for the first time in two decades. The Intercontinental Rally Challenge involves the biggest names competing in timed stages along closed roads in rural Stirlingshire and Perthshire. It’s the final event of a calendar that has included races in Brazil, Monaco, Kenya, Russia and Japan. Will they be prepared for the unique conditions of Scotland in early winter? It’s a spectacle not to be missed.
Traditional and Testing
One of the oldest pastimes in Scotland, and one which is dominant in the highlands, is shinty. Played with sticks, called camans, and a leather ball that can be struck at more than a hundred miles an hour, the game is physically demanding and extremely entertaining to watch. The annual showcase, the Camanachd Cup Final, takes place in Oban in September while an international between the best shinty players of Scotland and Ireland’s best hurling stars will be held in the highland capital of Inverness in October.
There’s so much sport going on in the Year of Homecoming. Scotland is ready to play and to party. Are you?
Further Information
