by In the 2025 season, Sarah Tait had a single goal; The NCAA championships at the highest level of the American Collegiate Sport.
Eight months after 2025 and the hint of the hint has achieved this and much more, and this year has turned into a dream time for the 24-year-old from Edinburgh.
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Taits 2024 moved to the USA almost two years ago to study and train at the University of West Virginia, and was a disappointment with regard to the performances in her words.
But she made up for it again in 2025 after not only fulfilling her goal of leading the NCAAs, but also winning her first senior GB vest at the European team championships and perhaps above all to become the Scottish 3000 -M -Steplechase record holder.
As a few successful months, as she admits, was a welcome thrust that had experienced the challenges of the past year.
“In 2024 I didn’t show what I was capable of and I had some real disappointments,” she says.
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“However, every athlete has setbacks, and sometimes they need them because it motivates them to get better.
“At the beginning of 2025, I urgently wanted to make NCAAs missed last year last year, and so everything was geared towards it.
“I went into this season and thought I could break the Scottish record and I have a lot of obstacles from the NCAA systems more about results than was running. I was frustrated because I knew I was able to run faster. Attention in her home country.
Sarah Tait has been living in the USA for almost two years (Image: Getty Images)
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The previous record was held by none other as Eilish McColgan, which was resolved in 2013, and Tait not only broke McColgans record, but also hit him by a whopping seven seconds, with the girls’ athlete performing 27.80 seconds in the NCAA finals, where she took fourth place.
Betening McColgan’s brand was admitted that Tait, a bit of a moment, and felt in view of the support and encouragement that McColgan has given her younger compatriot in recent years, including the Dundonian invitation Tait, to join her initiative “Give Back to Track”.
And the support of one of the greatest athletes in Scotland has admitted Tait to significantly increase her self -confidence.
“Eilish has supported me for some time and she said some time ago that she thought I was the one who would break her record. So it is pretty special to finally have done it,” says Tait.
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“She has always been so helpful and I’ve really chosen her brain lately – it is amazing that it is able to do it.
“It means a lot to have broken her record. When I returned to her initiative for the first time, Eilish said:” This is Sarah Tate and she will break my Scottish plate “, so it was surprising to know that she really believes in me.”
Eilish McColgan was a great supporter of Sarah Tait (Image: Pa)
Tait will appear this weekend at the British athletics championships in the knowledge that they are in their lives.
She is currently second in Great Britain (behind the Englishman Elise Thorner) and is therefore not surprisingly on a panel spot this weekend and ideally the upper step of the podium. However, since these British championships doubled as a world championship attempts, Tait also has a potential selection for the GB team in mind. With the qualification standard for the world championships nine seconds faster than her current Scottish record, she knows that she will need the course of her life to book a seat on the plane to Tokyo, but the Scots has not reduced a completely foreign concept for Tait for 22 seconds from its best significant drop in time. However, she is aware that the best way to approach the selection of the World Championships is to concentrate entirely on their performance and hope that a quick time will follow.
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“The standard championship standard is a bit of a jump for me, but I don’t think it is unreachable,” she says.
“It only depends on how the race is managed, whether it can be reached this weekend.
“When I get the qualification time of the world or if I don’t get the time, it does not lose any time from how good my season was, so it is a nice position to concentrate just to walk well.
“What College sports in America really does is to teach them how to drive well, and I’m pretty sure that my racing skills now and hopefully that will help this weekend.”
