Ex-brickie Scott Lincoln eager to turn sweet 16 UK titles into global success

But it’s what he does in his downtime that has changed over his years of dominance of the British shot putt scene.

Back in the early days of a reign that has encompassed nine UK outdoor titles beginning in 2015 and continuing right the way up to last week in Manchester, Lincoln used to split his time between training at the City of York club and working as a bricklayer on his dad’s building site near his home town of Northallerton.

It was a routine that fit well with the hard-working Yorkshireman, who never wanted his life to be solely about his athletic career.

But when his dominance of the national scene opened up doors internationally, particularly an Olympic debut in Tokyo, it became transformative, to the point that UK Sport had to sit up and take notice by putting him on their funding programme.

It meant as he approached his late 20s he had to down tools on site to focus on his work in the shot putt circle.

“There’s a lot of change that happens that you don’t account for. There’s a lot of time spent sitting around,” Lincoln tells The Yorkshire Post.

“A lot of time that you’ve got to to burn and it takes a bit of time to get used to that.

“I was used to being busy all day, coming home to go training and then going to sleep, it’s been an adjustment from the busy site.

“But it’s been nice as well - if I’ve got two competitions in a week in Europe I’m not having to fly back in between, I can stay the extra days and concentrate on training.

“I feel like I’m starting to reap the rewards now, I’m in the shape of my life I just haven’t connected fully, but when I do it’s going to fly.”

He still keeps busy, rest and recuperation are not easy bedfellows.

When we speak just days after winning the outdoor national title for a ninth time to sit with his seven indoor gold medals, he was driving to Leeds to give a talk to a school full of pupils.

“I’m just going in to do a couple of assemblies, show my medals off and try and inspire the kids,” he says.

“It’s good to give back. It used to be written into my UK Sport contract that I have to do so many a year but they’ve actually stopped doing it, but I still go and do quite a few schools if I can.

“Bringing awareness of the sport because we don’t get as much publicity as the runners is important to me, it’s about spreading the word about what we do, how hard it is and that it’s possible for these kids to have a go at doing.

“People have a vision of shot putters, but there’s shot putters of all shapes and sizes nowadays, I’m relatively small in comparison to some of the guys I’m up against.”

He may tower over the domestic competition but there are still areas he needs to improve upon, even on the home front, as he looks to build on last year’s bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games – “there was such a buzz, it’s something I’ll always remember”.

“I wasn’t satisfied in Manchester,” admits the 30-year-old. “Technically I just didn’t quite click on the day, there was a little bit missing on the finish of the throw, but other than that the rhythm was good, the timing was good, I just didn’t connect with any of them, they were slipping off my hand or not feeling right off my fingers.

“It’s something we’re already back at work sorting out and hopefully the next few comps will be good leading up to the worlds.”

Those ‘worlds’ are the main global gathering of the year in Budapest in August and the last one before next year’s Olympics in Paris.

He placed 16th in the world championships last year, learning plenty about pacing himself through a major tournament in the process.

“With qualifying in the morning and a final in the afternoon, it’s two competitions in the same day and I need to get better at managing that – not to get over-excited in the morning, throw well and zap all of my energy, so a lot of learning to do,” he admits. “If I connect with one I could potentially be top five, so we’ll see what happens.”

He connected with one at the recent European Team Championships in Poland and hurled it 21m10, 40cm shy of the qualifying mark he needs to throw at some stage this summer to set him on the path to Paris.

There cannot be many Yorkshire athletes out there as dominant in their field as Scott Lincoln, he just needs to start showing it on the international stage now, starting in Budapest.