Abu Dhabi: Emerging sporting nations such as Qatar and the UAE should invest in grassroots sport in the same vein as the ultra-successful Team GB to boost their Olympic and Paralympic Games prospects.

That’s the view of the British former long-distance runner and Olympian, Liz McColgan, who works as an athletics coach in the Qatari capital of Doha.

She is proud and delighted that Team GB have become an exemplar of success following their heroics at the recently concluded Olympics and the Paralympics in Rio.

“[Team GB’s performance] has been brilliant,” McColgan, who won silver in the women’s 10,000-metres at the 1988 Olympics, told Gulf News. “We had more GB finalists than we’ve ever had [at the Olympics].”

Team GB remarkably finished second in the medal table at the Olympics, one place ahead of the superpower of China, garnering their second-best haul of 67 medals since the modern Games began in 1896.

The British Paralympians also came second in the medal table, plundering 147 medals, their third-greatest tally and 27 more than the total achieved at London 2012.

But such laudable achievements did not come cheaply.

UK Sport, which determines how public funds raised via the national lottery and tax are allocated to elite-level sport in Great Britain, has pledged almost £350 million (Dh1.7m) to Olympic and Paralympic sports between 2013 and 2017, up 11 per cent on the run-up to London 2012.

“Anyone who wants to build success in sport, you have to invest in the grassroots level,” said McColgan, who worked as a pundit on beIN Sports’ exclusive television coverage of the Olympics in the Mena region.

“I hope other countries like Qatar and the UAE really take hold of investment in schools and develop kids coming through. You have to start at the bottom to have sustainability.”

The UAE and Qatar won a medal apiece at the Olympics — through judoka Sergiu Toma’s bronze for the former and high jumper Mutaz Barshim’s silver for the latter.

Both countries then performed even better at the Paralympics, which ended on September 18.

The UAE finished 38th in the medal table with seven medals (two gold, four silver and one bronze), while Qatar came 67th with two silvers.

Does McColgan, who was also the 10,000m world champion in 1991 and who won three Commonwealth Games medals, believe Qatar particularly has the potential to reach even greater heights?

“Yes, definitely,” the Scot replied. “There’s a lot of potential in Doha.

“Qatar is such a fast-developing country; it’s only been developed in the last 25 years.

“It’s developed so quickly with its infrastructure that sport’s on catch-up, especially with the [2022] World Cup coming. The next stage is to develop some talented youth and have some sustainability.”

McColgan, 52, hopes the fact that the 2019 World Athletics Championships will be held in Doha will provide further inspiration for aspiring Arab athletes.

She also believes Qatar could bid to hold the Olympics in the future.

Meanwhile, McColgan has been striving to help by identifying young talent in Qatari schools and would like to franchise her athletics club to the UAE and Jordan.