SOME athletes have a fairly brief sporting life; a few years of success and glory and they are finished - they have to hang up their gloves, or boots, or fins or whatever and take to coaching or management.
But swimming is one of the few sports that has got it just right. For you can start Master swimming at the age of 21, and keep on competing against your contemporaries right into your 90s, health and luck allowing.

A supreme example of such sports people are the Inverness trio of Alex Sutherland, his sister Nancy Scott and Sandra Lea, who - all in different age groups - came home from the recent Scottish National championships at Greenock having netted a total of 22 medals between them, 17 of which were Gold. Alex broke three records in his class on the way to his five Golds, achieving better times than he did a year ago. And Nancy holds the British record in her class for the 800m.

These are remarkable achievements by any standards, and a testimony to the traditions of Inverness Swimming Club and the excellent facilities that the sport has in Inverness. Alex, who is 80 this year and lives in Loch-alsh Road with his wife Rhoda (also a keen swimmer), has won hundreds of medals and broken many records in his time, travelling the world to compete, not only in Scottish and UK events, but to represent Scotland and Great Britain in European and World events.

Born and brought up in Anderson Street and Telford Road, Alex and Nancy both attended Merkinch Primary. Besides a spell in the RAF as a radio operator on Lancasters, Alex spent all his working life with the local authorities - he recalls happy days working for the joint Town and County library at the Castle - while Nancy, a teacher, was headmistress at Smithton Primary for 17 years.

Alex learned to swim in the canal and he remembers the first Swimming Gala to be held in the town at the opening of the Glebe Street baths in 1937. His father, half-back with Clachnacuddin FC for 16 years, was also a keen swimmer and he and Alex were both founder members of Inverness Swimming Club. He was a coach with the Club since 1946, so there are few swimmers of note in the town who have not benefited from his expertise and sound advice.

Among his souvenirs, Alex still has a programme for an international event in 1946 which features a number of competitors who went on to Olympic glory. Quite a few are still contestants in Masters events, 55 years on!
“There are some good swimmers in the Highlands just now - among the best in Scotland. They have to train hard,” says Alex, “some do 5000 metres (200 lengths) every morning before they go to school.” Inverness Swimming Club has around 20 qualified coaches, and the Highland Swim Team has professional coach Jeff Tavisdale.

But if swimming success was once thought to be only for teenagers, with Masters events only for the less able, those days are in the past: the fastest British women swimmers, for instance, are currently in their 30s.
Among those whom Alex has coached are Commonwealth cycling champ Kenny Riddle and the previously mentioned Sandra Lea. She once swam from Fort George to Inverness, and returned to the Highland Capital after spending around 30 years in New Zealand to add to the depth of talent in the local Masters team.

Thrashing up and down a swimming pool for hours of training may seem a lonely business, but an aspect of his sport that Alex particularly enjoys is the number of friendships he has forged over the years and he has made friends all over the world - in Canada, America, Austria and New Zealand….

Alex has twice been accorded the Inverness Sports Council Sportsman of the Year Award and this month he is among those honoured to carry the Queen’s Jubilee Baton through Inverness.
As if all this were not enough, Alex is also a keen climber and a founding member of Inverness Mountaineering Club. The first Invernessian to climb Mont Blanc, Alex is still able to show many younger folk a clean pair of heels in the hills - and Rhoda is never that far behind either!