Callum Hawkins: 'Did I win?' Collapsed marathon runner not angry at organisers

Scottish athlete Callum Hawkins has revealed he asked ambulance staff whether he had won the Commonwealth Games marathon or not as he was taken to hospital in a distressed and severely dehydrated state.

The 25-year-old was in the gold medal position having completed around 40km of the 42km course in Gold Coast when he collapsed, but recalls little else in the immediate aftermath.

“I remember coming around the corner and seeing the bridge, knowing there were about a mile, a mile and a half, to go,” he told BBC.

“Then the next thing you know, my legs are almost switching off on me and going to jelly, I’m starting to stumble.

“I remember falling off at the side of the road and then trying my best to get back up and then I don’t remember anything after that.”

Hawkins, who had a two-minute lead over Australian Michael Shelley, said the next thing he remembered was being in the ambulance following his collapse.

“The first thing I asked (was) did I win because I thought there might have been a chance that I went on autopilot and finished it,” he said.

“But nobody answered me and I knew straight away, eh that’s a no.”

Hawkins said he was not angry about the slow response from organisers or spectators to his collapse that resulted in him hitting his head on the barrier and lying stricken and unattended for several minutes.

“If you see that happen it’s the shock of it and you freeze,” he said.

“It more annoys me that I managed to put myself in that place [of extreme dehydration] because if I hadn’t I would have won a medal.”

Hawkin’s also revealed that he was reluctant to receive any assistance from the roadside in case it would lead to his disqualification from the event.

The Scotsman did however concede that in retrospect race officials should have been able to make the decision to remove him from the race.

“I was desperate for a medal and I had put everything I could into it,” he said.

“So for somebody to stop me I probably would have told them to get [lost], but once I’d got back up, I had no recollection of it, so maybe I should have been pulled.

“Maybe there needs to be a rule put in that, after two falls or something, or so long that it looks like you’re not getting any better, there needs to be somebody to pull it like boxing.”