Sport / Island Games round-up: runners finish with final medal flourish
SHETLAND’S long and short distance athletes inspired silver success on the last day of the 2025 Island Games, as the blues closed out the competition with 17 medals.
Female running teams were responsible for the last two medals of the Orkney games for team Shetland, both of them silver.
It was the turn of the half-marathon bright and early on Friday, with Mary Rutherford, Michelle Sandison and Diana Tulloch having all week to wait to lace up their boots.
The team attacked the race with all the vigour of runners who had been eagerly awaiting their chance, with Tulloch finishing just outside the medal positions in fourth overall.
Coupled with Sandison’s ninth place finish that gave Shetland a team score of 13, enough to win a silver medal and just behind the Western Isles’ score of 11 for the gold.
After waiting all week for their event, they then faced a long wait again for official confirmation that they had bagged the silver – but celebrated ecstatically when it was ratified.
With the half-marathon team still draped in the Shetland flag and clutching their medals trackside, the Shetland 4 x 100m relay team took to the track.
Sophie Grant, Katie Dinwoodie, Lauren Grains and Eva Thompson had smashed the Shetland record for the race in the heat on Thursday, so hopes were high that they could extend Shetland’s medal tally.
And so it would prove after a sensational race, with Thompson flying across the line to set another new Shetland record of 47.97s and clinch a silver medal for the team.
It was the icing on a remarkable week for the blues’ athletic talent, with Thompson adding to her long jump bronze and Dinwoodie winning her third medal after 100m silver and 200m bronze.
The men’s half-marathon also saw top performances from Shetland’s athletes, with James Irvine ninth across the line – less than a week after finishing the men’s triathlon in sixth place.
He crossed the line in a time of 1 hour, 14 minutes and 33 seconds, with Neil Arthur 16th – after also completing the 10km race earlier in the week – and Russell Gair 33rd in 1:24:34.
Over in the heart of Kirkwall’s streets came the turn of the men’s and women’s cycling town criterium, one of the fastest and most unforgiving races in the games calendar.
It saw cyclists whizz past spectators at high speed in short, tight circuits of the town, with competitors flying past the St Magnus Cathedral in their pursuit of medals.
Team Shetland had five competitors in the two races – Lynsey Henderson in the women’s, and Ross Osborn, Grant Ferguson and Andrew Grant in the men’s.
To the surprise of Shetland’s supporters, also toeing the starting line was Robin Atkinson – who had been widely expected to miss the race after coming off his bike into a fence during Wednesday’s road race and sustaining hand and leg injuries.
But cheered on by spectators from across the inter-county divide, Atkinson powered through the event to complete a remarkable recovery.
Atkinson said after Friday’s criterium that the only injury he sustained on the day came when he managed to fall off his bike while stationary after finishing.
Fresh off winning Shetland’s solitary gold of the games on Thursday, Ferguson was Shetland’s first across the line in the men’s race in 16th place.
He was followed by Grant, Osborn and Atkinson, who were among the group pulled out of the race for the final three laps, but who visibly loved every minute of their criterium experience.
They call the Island Games the “friendly games”, and that spirit was exemplified in Henderson’s finish to the women’s criterium.
Her and Orkney counterpart Alison Leitch crossed the finish line holding hands to gain matching times, in her third event of the week.
She will go home clutching her silver medal won alongside Louise Parr, Emma Leask and Wendy Hatrick in Sunday’s triathlon team event, which paved the way for the 17 medals Shetland would eventually win.
The only other event taking place for Shetland’s athletes on the last day was the squash team competition, in which the depleted blues finished last.
The team were at an immediate disadvantage after team members Louise Jamieson and Ruth Anderson had to withdraw injured, with Jersey and Isle of Man 1-0 up on Shetland before a squash racquet had even been swung.
And so it was on to the closing ceremony, which brought the curtain down on a week of sun, sport and celebrations.
Shetland’s teams entered the Kirkwall athletics track for one final victory lap, basked in one last dose of Kirkwall sunshine as they paraded their medals and high-fived excited Orkney school bairns.
Orkney Island Games committee chairman Gordon Deans concluded the formalities with references to their record-breaking week, and to the unexpected week-long blast of hot weather that not even the organisers could have accounted for.
There was mention of Orkney’s brilliant home medal haul of 31 – some way short of the 46 Shetland picked up when they hosted the games in 2005. Finally, some inter-county bragging rights this week.
By then the thousands of athletes and officials lining the centre of the track had their minds set on one thing only, and with the Island Games officially handed over to Faroe Islands for 2027 the party was finally kickstarted.
Orcadians will remember for years to come the week that the games came to visit and brought the sun.
But for thousands of competitors, coaches and supporters, the memories that Orkney 2025 brought them will last a lifetime.
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