On July 18, the Australian state of Victoria withdrew from hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games because the forecast cost figures had gone over the expected figure. It was only revealed as the host last year after Durban withdrew from hosting the 2022 event in 2017, replaced by Birmingham.
Later that day, the New Zealand Olympic Committee confirmed it would not be a replacement option for the Games.
On August 19, the State of Victoria agreed to pay a $409 million settlement after its withdrawal.
On December 4, the Gold Coast scrapped its bid to host the Commonwealth Games after failing to generate support from the state (Queensland) or federal governments.
The background story is just as bleak. Before Victoria was awarded the 2026 Games, Kuala Lumpur, Cardiff, Calgary, Edmonton and Adelaide had all scrapped proposed bids because they were concerned about costs.
Last year’s Games, held in Birmingham, may be the last ever. Originally they were due to be staged in Durban, but they were struggling and lost the rights, the South African sports minister said, “We gave it our best shot. But we don’t have the money.”
To allow them to go ahead in Birmingham in 2022, the British Government had to put up more than 560 million pounds, and the local city council another 190 million pounds.
Having been lucky enough to report on four Games, in Scotland in 1970 and 2014, and New Zealand in 1974 and 1990, I have nothing but fond memories of the Commonwealth Games.
Unlike the Olympics, there’s no overblown, political drama, nor the massive urban sprawl when cities like Tokyo and Los Angeles stage the Olympics. By contrast, the Commonwealth Games of the past had an almost small-town charm.
You could say that old Kiwis, starry-eyed about the way Christchurch embraced the Games in 1974, should stop wishing for the return of flared jeans, Top Town, disco music, and the Games.
But more recently, in 2014 in Glasgow, not a place, as Sir Billy Connolly has proved so often, for trite nostalgia, the atmosphere during the Games was as warm as the unseasonal, 27C, weather. Local people embraced the event.
Sales of the official mascot of the Games, a $20 purple-haired, green-faced thistle soft toy called Clyde (after the river), topped 50,000.
Official volunteers in the city streets were endlessly helpful and funny too. “You know how it works,” a sturdy Glaswegian directing queues outside the city’s central rail station would tell me. “They offered Scots people free rail travel if we volunteered, and we all stopped listening after the word ‘free’”.
It’s true that the Games have always been a weird concept. When they were first mooted, in 1891, by an Englishman, one working title was the Pan-Anglican contest, to honour English-speaking nations.
When they actually began, in Hamilton in Canada in 1930 as the British Empire Games, the basic qualification was that your country had to have once been ruled by Great Britain.
Dick Tayler crossing the finishing line to win the 10,000m race at the 1974 Christchurch Commonwealth Games. Photo / Supplied
By sheer chance that meant in later years a sprinting powerhouse like Jamaica, and a long-distance force like Kenya, would qualify for the Commonwealth Games alongside British, Australian and New Zealand track and field athletic squads. Swimming got the Australians, and sevens rugby the Fijians, the New Zealanders, and the South Africans.
When it all coalesced there were sensational moments, like the men’s 1500m final in Christchurch in 1974, when Tanzania’s Filbert Bayi edged out New Zealand’s John Walker. Bayi (3m 32.2s) and Walker (3m 32.5s) both ran inside what was then the world record of 3m 33.1s set by American Jim Ryun.
From a purely selfish standpoint, keeping the Games alive is important for New Zealand.
They’ve been a terrific stepping stone to the Olympics for many of our greats, from Sir Murray Halberg, who won the three miles in Cardiff in 1958, before winning Olympic gold in Rome in 1960, to Dame Valerie Adams, who first went to a Commonwealth Games as a 17-year-old in 2002.
“I really enjoyed them,” she’d say a decade later. “Going to the 2002 Games did feel like a bigger deal than the world juniors in Jamaica, that I competed in two weeks before I went to Manchester. There was a much bigger New Zealand team at the Games, and it was the first time I’d ever been in a team with other sports involved.”
If there’s ever to be another Commonwealth Games some massive decisions will have to be made.
The only way to continue surely has to be to stop trying to be a mini-Olympic and pare the number of sports right back to those that can draw audiences live and on television.
There were 19 sports, and 4600 competitors in Birmingham.
As brutal as it may be, the time has come to slash numbers. The cold fact is that the choice is surely between a smaller, streamlined event, or the Games petering out before their centenary in 2030.
A sad footnote is that Hamilton in Canada, where the Games started, had hoped to host the 2030 Games. But in February it was announced that the city’s bid was over. The predicted cost of half a billion Canadian dollars was too much.
Phil Gifford has twice been judged New Zealand sportswriter of the year, has won nine New Zealand and two Australasian radio awards, and been judged New Zealand Sports Columnist of the year three times. In 2010 he was honoured with the SPARC lifetime achievement award for services to sports journalism.
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