The 2026 Commonwealth Games should be named after Sir Chris Hoy, the First Minister has said.
John Swinney said he was ‘very supportive’ of the idea to call the event the Sir Chris Hoy Games after Glasgow was confirmed as host city.
The six-time Olympic gold medallist, 48, disclosed at the weekend that he is suffering from terminal cancer and is likely to have less than four years to live.
He was an official ambassador when Glasgow last hosted the Games in 2014 and the velodrome built for that event was named after him.
Calls for the entire 2026 event to be renamed in his honour have been growing and the First Minister said he would be in favour of any such move.
He said: ‘I feel totally vexed for Chris Hoy and for his family.
‘The situation they face is being borne with the exceptional courage all of us have come to appreciate and value from Chris Hoy and I couldn’t admire him more for how he has handled and communicated the news.’
Glasgow was officially confirmed as the host city following the withdrawal of the n state of Victoria, where the project had been criticised as ‘a waste of taxpayer money’.
The ‘slimmed-down’ event will showcase only ten sports compared with 17 in 2014, and Mr Swinney has had to provide assurances about funding because of the parlous state of public finances.
Badminton, hockey, diving and triathlon are among those dropped from the competition.
No public money will be spent on the event after the Scottish Government secured £100million of funding from the Commonwealth Games Federation.
Four existing venues in Glasgow will be used to host sports including swimming, cycling and athletics between July 23 and August 2, 2026. Integrated para events will be staged.
More than 500,000 tickets will be available for spectators.
Mr Swinney said: ‘We have secured assurance on both the preparatory time and also on the control of costs, that there will be no call on the public purse and, indeed, there cannot be a call on the public purse by the agreement that we have negotiated.’
He suggested the number of events could be pared back even further if costs increased, saying it would ensure there was ‘effective financial control’ in place around the preparation.
Athletics and swimming are compulsory sports for the 2026 Games and there will also be track cycling, gymnastics, netball, weightlifting, boxing, judo, bowls and 3×3 basketball.
Commonwealth Games Scotland chairman Ian Reid said it was not easy to decide which sports to include.
He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: ‘We would have loved to have all of our sports and all of our athletes competing but unfortunately it’s just not deliverable or affordable for this time frame.’