Susan Egelstaff: If all goes to plan, 2025 could be a thriller for Scottish sport

But, thankfully, from a Scottish perspective, there’s a wealth of things to be looking forward to in 2025 and in the coming twelve months, there’s plenty of potential intrigue and excitement ahead.

For me, one of the things I’ll be watching most closely in 2025 is how the preparations for the 2026 Commonwealth Games progress.

Following the confirmation last September that Glasgow will host the Games in 2026, the remainder of the year saw precious few further details emerge about the event.

Other than the ten sports that will make up the programme, and the four venues at which they will take place, we know little else about the Games.

But come the end of 2025, we will have a far clearer idea of what Glasgow 2026 will look like. 

And, more importantly, the next 12 months will give the organisers the opportunity to build some goodwill within the city for an event that has been met with considerably more scepticism than Glasgow 2014 faced.

Inside the sporting arena, I’m anticipating 2025 to be something of a make-or-break year for Josh Taylor.

Whatever Taylor does with the remainder of his career, he will forever be considered one of Scotland’s greatest-ever boxers.

Having become undisputed light-welterweight champion of the world in 2021, his legacy is already cemented but 2025 will dictate whether his career goes out with a whimper or a bang.

He’s fought only twice in the space of nearly three years – and has lost both bouts, most notably his defeat to Jack Catterall in May of last year.

Having turned 34 earlier this week, Taylor has limited time remaining of his career but as one of Scotland’s best athletes, most observers surely hope he can muster at least one successful outing in 2025.

And sticking on the boxing theme, 2025 will see two of Scotland’s most successful amateurs of the last few decades begin to build their professional careers.

Both Sam Hickey and Reese Lynch turned professional in the second half of 2024; Hickey made his pro debut last autumn while Lynch’s pro debut is imminent.

Sam Hickey made his professional debut towards the end of 2024 (Image: Getty) Both are Commonwealth Games gold medallists and both established themselves as amongst the very best amateurs in the world.

The pro game, as every fighter knows, is a different kettle of fish but this pair of fighters is lined up to step into Josh Taylor’s shoes as world-class professional fighters.

I remain somewhat obsessed with the over-achieving of Scottish runners and while it may be the middle distance events in which Scottish athletes have achieved most success in recent years but perhaps the most intriguing event to watch in the coming year is the marathon and, more specifically, Callum Hawkins and Eilish McColgan.

Eilish McColgan will make her marathon debut in 2025 (Image: Adam Davy/PA Wire) Hawkins is, of course, a seasoned marathon runner while McColgan has yet to make her debut over 26.2 miles but for both, 2025 is likely to be a defining year.

Hawkins has endured injury misery in recent years while McColgan too has not had injury worries to seek in the past 12 months.

Both, however, have rediscovered their fitness and are optimistic that 2025 will be the year they run a fast marathon.

And on the track rather than the road, Jake Wightman has had truly awful luck since becoming world 1500m champion in the summer of 2022.

Since then, injury has dictated that he’s been able to race only a handful of times and he missed out both on defending his world title and the 2024 Olympics.

2025 will, unquestionably, be a pivotal year for Wightman.

If he can regain both fitness and form this season, there’s every chance he could add more major medals to his cabinet.

If he suffers another injury-plagued season, though, it’s hard to see Wightman ever competing with the best middle-distance runners again.

There are no bigger shoes to fill than those of Britain’s greatest tennis player, Andy Murray, who retired last year, but in Jacob Fearnley and Charlie Robertson, Scotland has two up-and-coming tennis players who have the potential to push their way into the upper echelons of the world rankings.

Jacob Fearnley has broken into the world’s top 100 (Image: Getty) 2025 will be a vital year for both; Fearnley has recently broken into the world’s top 100 and so this year will be his first season making it into grand slam main draws by right while 2025 is Robertson’s first season as a pro.

Both have ambitions of becoming legitimate world class players and a successful 2025 will go quite some way to seeing them achieve that goal.

Someone who is considerably more experienced than this young tennis pair is Hannah Rankin, who has written herself in the Scottish sporting history books by becoming this country’s first-ever female boxing world champion. But she’s recently set herself perhaps her most ambitious target ever of becoming a two-sport world champion.

Hannah Rankin wants to become a two-sport world champion (Image: Getty) The 34-year-old made her bare knuckle fighting debut in October but it’s over the next twelve months when we’ll find out if she really has the potential to make it to the top of this most brutal of sports. 

Her second bare-knuckle fight is imminent and she’s already stated she wants to waste little time in climbing the ladder in her new discipline.

She’s not ruled out entirely ever returning to boxing but if her bare knuckle journey this year goes well, it seems likely we may never see her in a boxing ring again.