AS the 2017 athletics season comes to a close, scottishathletics’ superb year has been rewarded with a significant sponsorship agreement, writes Susan Egelstaff.

The governing body has announced that it has teamed up with professional recruitment specialists FPSG in a deal that will cover the scottishathletics and jogscotland Annual Awards Dinner, the Indoor Season at the Emirates Arena and the Outdoor Season in track and field and will run until 2020.

The first event carrying FPSG title sponsor is the scottishathletics Awards Dinner, being staged in Glasgow on November 4.

The evening’s celebrations will include awarding the title of FPSG Athlete of the Year, for which there are a number of contenders including Laura Muir, Callum Hawkins and Sammi Kinghorn.

The partnership is a further boost for scottishathletics, which was named Governing Body of the Year at the recent Team Scotland Awards, with John Agnew, managing director of FPSG, saying: “The growth and development of scottishathletics over the past few years has been a real credit to all their members and the exciting plans they have for the future is something that FPSG really want to be involved with.”

FPSG’s sponsorship is in addition to the backing given to the Awards dinner by The National’s sister paper The Herald, official media sponsor of the event.

“We’re pleased to continue as official Media Partners with scottishathletics for events like the FPSG Annual Awards,” said Stewart Weir, head of sport with The Herald. “It was a great night last year as a celebration of the sport in Scotland and we were already committed for 2017 and 2018.

“We are now happy to extend that by a further two years to 2020 – in line with the FPSG sponsorship.”