It's estimated that some 6.5 million people stayed up into the wee small hours on 21 February to watch Rhona Martin skipper her team to victory, becoming the first Scots to win a Winter Olympic gold for 66 years. Few nations share such pride, or indeed passion, for their sporting heroes – support borne out by the 40,000 plus votes cast to decide which names should grace the inaugural Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.

In all, 19 sports were represented by the first 50 inductees into the Hall, announced on St Andrews Day, 30th November 2002. Spanning nearly 200 years of achievement, the permanent exhibition at Edinburgh's Royal Museum on Chambers Street celebrates Scotland's greatest sportsmen and women of the past in fields as diverse as athletics and boxing to walking and weightlifting.

No less than ten of our greatest footballers are represented, reflecting Scotland's obsession with 'the beautiful game', if not our degree of international success. Top players like Kenny Dalglish, MBE, our most-capped footballer; Denis Law, possibly the greatest striker of them all; Jimmy 'Jinky' Johnstone and Billy Bremner rub shoulders with household names more famous for their contributions off the field, like big Jock Stein, OBE; Bellshill-born Sir Matt Busby and the Father of Liverpool, Bill Shankly.

Rugby too is represented, by a handful of greats, including the youngest member of our Hall of Fame, Gavin Hastings, OBE, captain of Scotland and record points-scorer. In the line out along with him, another of Scotland's full-backs, Andy Irvine, MBE, who completed a hat-trick of tours with the Lions; and GPS Macpherson who captained Scotland to its first Grand Slam title in 1925.

From pitch to putt, Scotland gave the world not only the game of golf, but many of its finest courses and most talented players, including 'Young' Tom Morris, the first golf professional to make a living from his winnings and first name to appear on the Open's celebrated Claret Jug in 1872. Teeing off with him, five-time Open winner, James Braid; the great Tommy Armour, affectionately known as the Silver Scot; and Belle Robertson, MBE, who dominated the ladies game for over a quarter of a century.

It speaks volumes for the regard in which Scots hold their sportsmen and women that another of our golfing greats, Sam Torrance, has just been voted Ambassador of the Year at the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland awards, also announced on St Andrews Day. Ayrshire-born Sam led this year's European Ryder Cup team to victory over out-and-out favourites, the US, deploying canny tactics and showing a genuine sense of humility. Rhona Martin and her team, meanwhile, consisting of Janice Rankin, Fiona MacDonald, Debbie Knox and Margaret Morton were awarded the accolade Scotsman of the Year. Who knows what their achievement may spark off – perhaps a renaissance in this most Scottish of sports, leading to the kind of crowds seen in Canada, where more than 54,000 spectators turn out to watch major events.

Roughly twice that number watched another of our Sports Hall of Fame inductees, Allan Wells, MBE, power to 100 metres gold in the Moscow Olympics of 1980. One of our greatest athletes, he's joined by other track and field stars including Ian Stewart, 5000-metres Commonwealth gold and Olympic bronze medallist; and Donald Dinnie who was breaking all kinds of records nearly half a century before the advent of the modern Olympic Games. Donald won no less than 10,000 Highland Games contests.

Chock-full of the leading lights from many of our most popular sports, the Hall of Fame also honours some of Scotland's more unusual sporting greats, like Captain Robert Barclay Allardice who in 1809 walked 1000 miles in 1000 hours for a bet! Within living memory, Lanarkshire-born Mike Denness captained the England cricket team 19 times and to this day holds the record score for an England skipper against Australia Down Under. Another giant of a man, but this time from Scotland's sporting archives, is Launceston Elliot, our first gold medallist who at 1896's Athens Olympic Games won the now defunct one-handed lift (along with a proposal of marriage from a 'highly placed lady' in the crowd). Weighing in at 16 stones, he was twice the size of another of our sports stars, champion jockey Willie Carson, OBE, who rode 3878 winners and is still the only person to have bred and ridden the winner of a Classic.

Blessed with such an abundance of sporting talent, it would be easy to go on listing names indefinitely, from the worlds of boxing, motor racing, swimming, tennis and yachting amongst others. No account of our sporting heritage though would be complete without special mention of our most popular sporting hero – Eric Liddell. An international rugby player, Liddell is best known for his athletic prowess immortalised in the film 'Chariots of Fire'. Refusing to compete in his preferred 100 metres because the event fell on the Sabbath, he competed in and won the 400 metres instead, despite a lack of training and experience.

Developed through a unique partnership between sportscotland and the National Museums of Scotland, the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame complements other great testimonies to our sporting past, including the worlds first national football museum, at Hampden Park. The result of 13 years of painstaking research and collecting, the Scottish Football Museum is home to the world's most impressive collection of football memorabilia and is itself housed in the oldest continuously used international ground in the world. The British Golf Museum at St Andrews, meanwhile, charts over 500 years of golf history from the Middle Ages (when for a time the sport was banned to encourage more people to practise archery) right through to the present day, looking at the tournaments, players and equipment that have helped shape the game which today generates around £120 million a year for the Scottish economy.

With such inspiring examples before them, who knows what the next generation of Scottish sporting greats may achieve. Perhaps one day, Denis Law's dream of Scotland winning the World Cup may come true!