‘I don’t want to be stopped eating a sausage roll’

Without being recognized, Sir Chris Hoy or Sir Andy Murray could not enter the city center. Even without his Olympic medals clanking around his neck, Duncan Scott might get a good few second glances.

However, Jack Carlin did it quite simply and unintentionally wander through Scotland’s largest city earlier this week.

Only two of Carlin’s Scottish compatriots have won more Olympic medals since his silver and bronze medals in Paris last summer. Hoy and Scott are the only other two. Even though he can surpass Carlin with two golds, even Murray falls short of his four-game total.

Not that the ebullient cyclist’s low profile even bothers him at all.

When I’m eating a sausage roll while walking down the road, he says, “the last thing I want to be stopped.”

When the Commonwealth Games take place in Glasgow next summer, the city’s residents might care a little more.

Carlin, who was a fan of the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in 2014, will play a key role in the reimagined event.

The 28-year-old has a wrong to right, as if playing a home game wasn’t enough motivation, given that he now lives just up the street in the city’s east end.

Carlin has reached the top of the podium 19 times in international competition, but he has never done so.

His Commonwealth winning streak includes silver, bronze, and keirin silver from three years ago, while his broken ankle 12 weeks away from Paris hampered his chances at the previous Olympics.

His focus is on the summer of next, after spending several months in Australia and south-east Asia.

I would never have believed him if someone said to 17-year-old Jack, sitting in the Glasgow 2014 spectators, “Listen, you’d be talking about a home Commonwealth Games, 12 years later, with four Olympic medals around your neck,” he says.

“It’s undoubtedly an exciting time for both Scottish and Glaswegian.”