I used to hate going to the gym at school. I think it was the shouting that put me off.

Our gym teacher had a voice in exact disproportion to his size. “Right, wee men”, he’d bellow, whilst staring up at his adolescent charges, “time for your burpees”.

Burpees, push ups, hanging upside down, and long runs in the rain are my memories of school PE. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in finding the wall bars and ropes, leather horses and medicine balls forbidding.

It never seemed to be about joy. It wasn’t until my twenties that I discovered the gym could be fun, and that music and a headset were a lot better motivation than puce-faced bellowing.

Watching others’ exertions from the sofa can be even better fun. Like so many of you, I’ve been gripped by the Olympics.

Every time I see Tom Daley dive, I think of how proud his Dad would have been. Tom’s a powerful role model, speaking out against school bullying and answering homophobic abuse with world-beating performances in the pool - not to mention Olympic speed-knitting caught on camera poolside.

And what a result for Scotland with eleven medals coming home, and Alloa boy Duncan Scott becoming the first athlete from the UK to win four medals at a single Olympics.

And what a result for the Wee County. Indeed, at one point an independent Clackmannanshire would have been 29th in the medal tables, ahead of Austria, Belgium, Poland, and Turkey.

Of course, these athletes’ extraordinary results have been years in the making. One factor in their success may well have been the Scottish Government’s decision to reverse decades of school sport cutbacks and the selling-off of playing fields by previous administrations.

Twenty years ago, only ten percent of kids were able to enjoy two hours of physical education a week. Today ninety nine percent do. And I suspect they have a lot more fun than I did with much less shouty teachers.

For many, the Olympics are about national pride. But for one team, that pride is bittersweet and shared with teammates from across the world.

The Refugee Olympic Team competed for the second time in Tokyo, after making its debut in Rio five years ago. In the intervening years, it’s tripled in size – a result, tragically, of the refugee crisis which has gripped the world.

The UN estimates that there are more than thirty-five million people displaced from their home countries as a result of conflict or natural disaster – more than one million having fled to Europe from Syria.

To have escaped such trauma and yet remain focused on Olympic glory is awe-inspiring. And the Paralympics are only just beginning…