There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over Scotstoun Stadium in the seconds before a distance final, the sort of hush that a runner feels in the legs before it ever reaches the ears. On the night of Tuesday 28 July, in torrential Glasgow rain, that hush belonged to David Mullarkey. Twenty five laps of the men's 10,000 metres lay ahead of him, against fields stacked with Kenyan and Ugandan talent, and somewhere out on that sodden track the Isle of Man's ninety six year wait for an athletics medal at the Commonwealth Games was quietly ticking down.

Mullarkey ran the whole race like a man who had already decided how it would end. He sat with the leaders, moved when the moment demanded it, and held his nerve as the bell rang and the real fight began. With a lap to go he struck, and though Australia's Ky Robinson and India's Gulveer Singh took gold and silver, it was Mullarkey who crossed the line in 27:50.28 to seize bronze, edging out Kenya's Edwin Kurgat by less than a second. It was the Island's first Commonwealth Games medal since Tim Kneale's shooting silver in 2018, and its first ever in athletics. 'To put the Isle of Man on the map in athletics is great,' he said, still catching his breath. 'It's not about focusing on the medals, it's about focusing on the time, how are we going to execute the best race that we can on the day.'

He was not alone out there. Fellow Manxman Ollie Lockley, back for a second Games after Birmingham, ran the same brutal conditions to a finish of 29:12.91, adding his own hard yards to a night that will be remembered on the Island for a long time.

Five days later, at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, the roar was of a different kind entirely. Matthew Bostock had already banked two fourth place finishes in the week, the sort of near misses that sharpen rather than soften a rider's resolve, and he brought every ounce of that frustration into the 40km points race, the final event of the Games in the velodrome. It came down to cat and mouse racing between three riders from halfway, laps and sprint points traded back and forth, until Bostock timed his moves to perfection and held off Australia's Oliver Bleddyn for gold. It was the Isle of Man's first Commonwealth title in twenty years, since Mark Cavendish's scratch race win in Melbourne in 2006, and it made Bostock only the fourth Manx athlete ever to stand on the top step at these Games. 'To win gold here with quite a few Manx people in the stands was just unbelievable,' he said afterwards, before admitting the emotion very nearly got the better of him. Asked what it takes to be a champion, his answer doubled as the whole squad's motto for the fortnight: 'Anything is possible if you work hard enough.'

The road to Glasgow had not stayed still. Sarah Astin, one of the original athletics selections and the Island's marathon record holder, was forced to withdraw through injury weeks before the Games. Her place went to Christa Cain, handed a late call up into the women's 5,000 metres, a discipline in which she had struck gold at the Island Games in Orkney the year before. 'Pretty wild,' was how she described the news, and she carried that composure into the final itself, working her own race in the detached group behind the leaders to finish nineteenth in 16:51.46, just eight seconds outside her own best.

On the field side of the track, nineteen year old Regan Corrin turned in one of the most eye catching performances of the week. Fresh off a long jump personal best of 7.84 metres that carried him comfortably into that final, he backed it up hours later with a battling top ten finish in the men's high jump, clearing 1.95 metres cleanly before a heartbreakingly late fall at 2.00 metres denied him more. Alongside him, middle distance runner Jack Kinrade made his own Commonwealth Games debut in the 800 metres, one of three athletics debutants in a squad built on fresh legs as much as experience.

Gymnast Harry Eyres had barely dared to hope for a start. Named as reserve, he learned only hours before the men's all around final that India's Yogeshwar Singh had withdrawn, handing him an unexpected place among the Commonwealth's best. He met the moment calmly, opening with a strong 12.800 on the vault and 11.650 on the floor in qualifying, before a composed final routine across all six pieces of apparatus brought him a combined score of 65.000 and sixteenth place. Not bad, he reflected, for a gymnast who had walked into the arena expecting only to watch.

Seventeen year old Alfie Bezance carried more than his own ambitions into Glasgow. As the Island's youngest ever Commonwealth Games flagbearer, he led Team Isle of Man out at the opening ceremony, admitting afterwards that he could not quite get the flag straight. In the men's heavyweight para powerlifting final he was first out onto the platform, and produced three clean lifts, topping out at 172 kilograms, comfortably beyond his own bodyweight, on his Commonwealth debut.

On the bowling green, Team Isle of Man opened the entire Games. Mark McGreal won his first outing in style, beating Jersey's Taylor Greechan in straight sets, while Paula Garrett and Caroline Whitehead endured an agonising afternoon in the women's pairs, racing into a 6-0 lead against Zambia only to lose out in a one end tiebreak. Michael Collister completed the four strong bowls team, the largest the Island has ever sent to a single Games.

In the pool at Tollcross, the Manx swimmers built their week on personal bests rather than podiums. Alex Turnbull's morning swim in the 50 metres breaststroke, a heat winning 28.51, stood out as one of the sharpest performances of the meet, part of a twelve strong swimming squad, the largest team of any discipline on the Island's books, that also included Peter Allen, Libby Curphey, Lauren Dennett, Charlie Foster, Ella Justice, Magnus Kelly, Laura Kinley, Oscar Maddrell, Kiera Prentice, Harry Robinson and Joel Watterson.

When the Games closed on 2 August, the tally read one gold and one bronze, the Island's best medal haul in its Commonwealth Games history, earned across twenty five athletes and six sports. Chief Minister Alfred Cannan called it a source of immense pride, praising the talent, dedication and determination shown across the ten day event. For a community of clubs, coaches and families spread across a small island in the Irish Sea, it was proof, in Matthew Bostock's own words, that anything really is possible if you work hard enough.