An old gentlemen, much cleverer than me, once told me that a good sign of condition was how quick the bird LOOKED dry after a wet fly!!! Now he might just have been telling a youngun like I was then a lot tosh but who knows???? If ye are racin frae a distance to Scotland then there is a fair chance that they will encounter heavy showers or prolonged rain somewhere on route and then his theory of how quick they recover or how they handle it would come into play I suppose?