Spend cash to build Olympic legacy, Judy Murray urges MSPs JUDY Murray told MSPs yesterday that Scotland must invest in coaching and sporting facilities to secure a lasting legacy from the Olympics. The mother of US Open tennis champion and Olympic gold medal winner Andy Murray was speaking just over a week after she and her son held talks with First Minister Alex Salmond about the creation of a national tennis academy in Scotland. Ms Murray, the country's leading tennis coach, was joined at the Holyrood committee by a panel of witnesses, including former distance runner and Olympic medallist Liz McColgan, to talk about how best to develop sporting talent in Scotland. Ms Murray said that facilities for youngsters must be "accessible and affordable." She added: "We have an enormous opportunity right now on the back of the Olympics and with the Commonwealth Games coming up to really capture the imaginations of the Scottish public. I don't just mean children, I mean the adults as well, because it is the parents who will enrol the children into sports classes. She told MSPs that, during her time as Scotland's national tennis coach, it had been the parents and volunteers who had helped deliver success. She added: "Facilities on their own will not get the job done. It has to be about people. It is one thing getting excited about it now, on the back of the Olympics, but in order to retain [young people] in the sports, that really comes down to the people. It is these pied pipers who get them into the clubs and enjoy what they are doing. She said teachers should be given support to do this, with extra staff brought into schools to help deliver such programmes in primaries one, two and three. These core physical skills could then be channelled into specific sports and school teams, which, in turn, would feed into community-based clubs, Ms Murray said. "We should invest as much in making kids physically literate as we do in making them literate-literate," she said. Ms McColgan, now an athletics coach, said 120 children had shown up at her local athletics club after the Olympics had finished. She said the club only had two coaches and no volunteers. "We've still got 112 kids on a Tuesday and Thursday night, which is fantastic to see - I've never seen it in my life," she added. They're not turned away, but how are we supposed to cope with that and keep that interest? We got all this great big emotion about the legacy of the Games, and how we were all going to go back to our little corners of the world and have these lovely children well catered for in fantastic facilities. It has just not happened. She went on: "In Scotland, we have so many stadiums empty and so many doors shut. It is ridiculous in this day and age that we don't have the facilities. This is the sad state of affairs that we're in now. We've got Andy Murray and all these fantastic sporting heroes, but they've not come from the development in Scotland, they've come from being very exceptional people who have excelled through it. Where is the next Andy Murray? Where is the next Liz McColgan? I haven't seen a runner come from Scotland for 20 years. And it is not because we don't have the ability.