Commonwealth Games 2014: Glasgow primed to make a big splash
|
Version 0 of 1. Eleven days, 17 sports, 71 nations and territories, 4,929 athletes. After 10 years of planning, the Glasgow Commonwealth Games will finally start at 8.45am on Thursday morning, at the Kelvingrove Lawn Bowls Centre where, no joke, the very first action of the Games will include such enticing match-ups as Malaysia v Niue in the women’s fours and Jersey v Zambia in the men’s triples. It is, in its way, an ingenious piece of planning: a welcome tonic to the bluster and bombast provided by the BBC, which has 1,300 hours of coverage to promote. And a gentle assertion of the identity of these Games, a reminder that they have a flavour of their own, as distinct from that of the Olympics as Glasgow is from London. The bowls will serve, too, as a toe-in-the-water by which we can gauge the warmth of the local feeling. In the short-term the public’s enthusiasm will be the single most important factor in determining whether or not these Games are a success. The blithe assumption that people will come simply because the event is here on their doorstep is entirely belied by what happened at the Delhi Games in 2010, when the organisers were forced to fill half-empty venues by bussing in soldiers and schoolchildren to fill the spare seats. If the lawn bowls can draw a crowd – and Kelvingrove seats 2,500 – then we can be sure that the Games will roll from strength-to-strength from that first event onwards, gathering momentum as they go. At 9am the badminton begins over on the east side of the city, with Scotland’s mixed doubles pair playing against the Seychelles. At the very same time, the women’s hockey tournament gets under way for Australia and Malaysia and, 90 miles away in Carnoustie, the 10m pistol shoot starts at the Barry Buddon Centre. At 10am there is the men’s weightlifting at the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre (SECC). Thirty minutes later, the gun goes in the swimming heats at Tollcross. At 11am, over on the west of the city, the great Nick Matthew begins the defence of his squash title at the Scotstoun sports campus and, back in Strathclyde Park, the women’s triathlon starts. A single minute after that the sprinters set off at the Chris Hoy velodrome. And at 11.30am, the netball tournament begins, with Malawi playing Northern Ireland back over at the SECC. Twenty gold medals will be won on the first day. No shortage of sport, then. If anything there may be a surfeit: some of the events are a tough sell. If the Games are not a big enough draw to guarantee the participation of the most famous names in the marquee events, it is a bit rich to expect the public to turn up. The men’s 100m in Delhi 2010, for instance, took place without any of the 10 fastest men in the Commonwealth that year. The stars promise to shine a little brighter in 2014. A cynic might wonder whether Usain Bolt’s participation, which will be confined to the final of the 4x100m – the bare minimum he can get away with – owes anything to the fact Virgin, one of his sponsors, are also one of the Games’ partners. They have plastered up posters with his image on all around the city. Scant as his participation is, Bolt’s mere presence is a boon, which should help the city get into the swing of the Games. As big as they are, the Commonwealths got a little lost in Delhi, a city of 600 square miles and 11 million people, most of them too busy getting on with their lives to spare time and money for anything so trivial as a third-rate 100m final, let alone a game of lawn bowls. Even the two cycling road races, on routes out and around the city centre, unfolded on empty streets. The organisers had cleared everyone out and closed everything down for security reasons. This time the organisers say they have sold 95% of the tickets, a little more than a million altogether. The organising committee’s chief executive, David Grevemberg, used his final press conference before the opening ceremony to try and shift the final 5%, urging people to snap up the remaining tickets for the badminton and weightlifting on the first two days. They will be available on the door. Mike Hooper, the chief executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation, is fond of saying that the event is “unashamedly of and for the Commonwealth” but the truth is that fans do not tend to travel a long way to see them. Less than 3% of tickets have been sold overseas. The Games’ success hinges on their ability to attract fans from the host city. On that score the Delhi Games, beset by bad-news stories from the outset, were one of the sorrier sports tournaments in recent history. Their local legacy has been, by all accounts, one of corruption investigations – a new inquiry into a $5m (£3m) contract to provide street lighting began this February – and empty, crumbling venues that have fallen into disrepair. In a broader sense they left plenty of people wondering what kind of a future the Commonwealth Games had ahead of them. Hooper still seems to wince when he thinks of Delhi 2010, though he is quick to point out that they were “the largest in history”, an achievement in no way synonymous with being the most successful. Many Indians were, understandably, incensed by the negative coverage, which reached a nadir when a TV host in New Zealand was forced to resign after insulting Delhi’s chief minister: “The Friendly Games” were anything but. Hooper admits that the Commonwealth can seem a dysfunctional group at times, “like any family”. It is a group bound together by its shared history, its trade associations and its participation in these Games. The idea set out in the 2013 Commonwealth charter that the territories are joined by their mutual appreciation of such virtues as “human rights” and “tolerance, respect, and understanding” is ridiculous given that consensual homosexual sex is a crime in 42 of the 53 member countries. Amnesty International says it will be issuing daily bulletins detailing human rights abuses committed in the participating nations for the duration of the Games. Those 2010 Games cost £1.5bn, which makes the £575m spent on this edition seem positively parsimonious. But then, according to the Office for National Statistics, only 63% of working age Glaswegians were employed in 2013. The city has been in the list of the five British cities with the highest percentage of workless homes for nine straight years, and the situation has been getting worse. The organisers are quick and keen to point out that more than 5,000 jobs and apprenticeships have been created directly from the Games, that £200m worth of contracts have been awarded to Glasgow firms, £198m invested in sports facilities, and £700m on Games-related transport infrastructure. The idea of bidding to host the Games in Glasgow was born during the Manchester edition back in 2002. “Legacy” is a word administrators love to toss around, but they say that the 2002 Games were a catalyst for change, and had a real, tangible, influence on the regeneration of the east side of the city. Whether the same will be true in Glasgow is something that will not be known for many years yet. For now it will be a start to simply ensure that the stadiums are full. |