One of the first acts of the new Scottish Nationalist government will be to seek permission from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for Scotland to field its own team at the 2012 Games.

Alex Salmond, the Scottish first minister, has announced that he is to convene a meeting of the country’s main sporting bodies within 100 days to draft a formal application to the IOC.

It has long been an ambition of the Scottish National party (SNP) to have separate representation at the games. Salmond sees the move as an important step towards the assertion of Scottish nationhood. The gesture will have the added impact of coinciding with fellow Scot Gordon Brown becoming prime minister.

While many Scottish athletes, including Chris Hoy, the Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist, and Shirley Robertson, a double gold medal-winning yachts-woman, are hostile to the idea of a separate Scottish team, it has supporters in the Tartan Army who were infuriated at Tony Blair’s suggestion that there should be a unified British football team competing at the 2012 games.

Salmond believes Scottish sport has been in the shadow of Britain for too long and that the country’s footballers deserve to compete at the Olympics in their own right. He says that if UK overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands can compete, there is no barrier to Scotland having its own squad.

While the 2004 charter of the IOC states that only a country which is “an independent state recognised by the international community” is eligible to field a team, numerous exceptions have been made for smaller entities.

Since last October, Stewart Maxwell, the new Scottish minister for sport, has been meeting the leaders of Scotland’s main sporting bodies to sound out potential support for the idea.

However, Sir Craig Reedie, the former chairman of the British Olympic Association and an IOC member in Great Britain, predicted the SNP application would be rejected.

“What they should be doing is concentrating on making sure that as many Scottish athletes as possible are represented in the British team in 2012,” he said.

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