I won a potato and spoon race in year 2. The instructions they gave said if we dropped the potato we should run to where it was and put it back on the spoon so I flicked the potato to the finish line and ran and collected it and won by an absolute mile.

End of year 3 at secondary school we got to go and do fun things for 3 days such as visit big cities tourist attractions/surf the Internet (in old, fight me!) or my personal favourite: go karting 😎

Highly competitive group that had a minor panic when someone crashed and broke the kart in half but the day progressed anyway. I struggled with the pace of some others, got spun out but somehow still qualified for the final.

Close racing all the way before a crash left just 2 of us in contention for the win. I get a bad exit out of the second to last corner, overtaken but there’s a big hairpin coming up. Fake one way, dice the other and on the brakes daringly late but enough to get up the inside and get the lead before the short sprint to the flag. Exhilarating!

Still got the little plastic trophy I won. 26 years on.

(The rest of the kids were assholes afterwards, go figure)

Once scored an overhead kick during our in-school football tournament. Even got a pat on the back from one of the bigger kids.

I peaked at 9 years old.

Playing 4th line defense on my high school hockey team, I managed to fall asleep on the bench and no one seemed to notice.

Best was coming second in a non-competitive 26 mile walk. Worst was the swimming certificate for a width of the local municipal pool whilst clinging to a lump of polystyrene foam. With hindsight the award was probably for not drowning.

I won some medals for ballroom dance when I was maybe 8 or 9. Not a sporting achievement I guess but it required a certain level of athleticism and co-ordination that I’m severly lacking in my 30s.

Not necessarily my greatest but I have a certificate from school for swimming a width. 😂

I was the captain of my high school basketball team for five minutes.

All the regular players (ie the actual sporty kids) had clashes with other things so the school team was made up of all the gets-picked-last rejects, including me. Given that university applications were being discussed with increasing vigour by our teachers we decided we’d take it in turns to be captain so we could all legitimately put it on our UCAS forms.

We got utterly humiliated by a team made of what I can only assume were ringers from the NBA (not a man of them was under 8 feet tall or thereabouts). Didn’t matter to us, though, we were living the dream of being athletes.

Probably making the team for a worlds level ultimate frisbee club, although I never got to play because of COVID 😩

Either that or climbing E1 trad.

As a lad I was pretty good at table tennis but never exceptional.

I won the players player of the year trophy for my under 15s football team in the mid 90’s. We were rubbish and only won 2 games that season but it was nice having all my mates vote for me.

Won a medal for most improved player once after I missed three penalties. Not the best player, but the most improved. The coaches definitely weren’t feeling sorry for me that day.

Also saved a shot from a premier league footballer once at school. Obviously wasn’t a premier league footballer at the time though.

I won gold medals for javelin shotput and discus in the Ayrshire championships as a wean. Although my greatest achieement was winning actual cash money at the Arran Highland Games 4k race for coming in 4th. There may only have been 4 people competing, but prize money is prize money, and I was just glad to finish considering I was more hungover than I’d ever been.

I was in Year 10 PE, playing rounders, my absolute worst. Hate that game. The teacher was the pitcher. I was at-bat. The teacher said to the catcher, “As soon as she misses, throw the ball straight to me.” She pitched, I whacked that ball and made it to first or second post. That’s my greatest sporting achievement and I still feel good about it now.

Got banned from the egg and spoon race for wanging the (wooden) egg out of frustration, accidentally into an unfortunate classmate’s temple.

Discovered at age 12 that I was actually fast as fuck over short distances and won a 200 metre race, leaving the sporty popular kids in my nerdy dust.

My teacher said “you’d have been a lot faster if you hadn’t kept looking behind you”