Commonwealth Games will be a gold-plate triumph

Mo Farah is running 5000m & 10000m

A friend in Glasgow warns of no entry signs multiplying like bacteria in clammy petri dishes, and says that the Evening Times’ list of roads to avoid has become essential reading. Another tells of numerous patches of empty seats and spirit-squeezing queues for last week’s grand prix athletics at Hampden Park, a test event for the Commonwealth Games. Then there are the absent sporting galácticos. The suspected norovirus at the athletes’ village.

And the other vague concerns, most of which will be blasted into irrelevance once the pyrotechnics and sing-along choruses of Wednesday’s opening ceremony get into full swing.

Let me make a prediction. The Commonwealth Games will be an enormous success. It will be almost unavoidable, unrelenting euphoria, and – if it can repeat the vibe of Manchester 2002 – quite a lot of fun. The scale and ambition of the BBC’s coverage, and the huge number of medals that will be won by British athletes, makes a gold-plated triumph almost inevitable.

Certainly the BBC is giving it the full London 2012 treatment. Across the 11 days of competition, BBC1’s schedule from morning to midnight consists of two elements: the news and the Commonwealth Games. Those wanting their fix of the 18th series of Homes Under the Hammer, the 34th series of Bargain Hunt, or EastEnders, will have to switch to BBC2.

There will be 300 hours of network TV coverage, 200 hours of radio and 1,300 hours of live action on 17 digital streams. Some will think that is overkill for a second-tier global event, the equivalent of ITV clearing its evening schedule for the Europa League. But where TV leads, newspapers will inevitably follow. The Games will force its way on to the back pages, pop up on front pages and probably squeeze into every section in between too.

And the staggering rate of British success at the 2012 Olympics, during which home athletes won 65 medals over 17 days, will be nothing compared to Glasgow. Remember in 2002, the last time the Commonwealth Games was held in Britain, England won 164 medals, Scotland 30, Wales 29 and Northern Ireland five – and that was before lottery funding had seeped through the top soil of athletics and into the roots.
Similar hauls over the 11 days in Glasgow would be unsurprising. Come Sunday week, even the staunchest of Scottish nationalists might be hearing Jerusalem in their sleep.

There is a third factor in the Commonwealth Games’ favour: the threadbare sporting calendar during the next fortnight. The Tour de France is nearly cooked. England’s Test series against an India team lacking Tendulkar-era stardust bubbles rather than burns. And while football never stops, even in the small gap between the World Cup and the new season, there is no enduring transfer saga to dominate headlines.
Of course the standard of competition will be mixed. It would be foolish to deny otherwise. At London 2012, only one badminton medal was won by a Commonwealth country, while of the 15 nations that won judo medals at the Olympics only Britain will be represented in Glasgow.

Yet in other events – cycling, rugby sevens, netball, hockey, squash and bowls – the competition circles close to top class. Athletics, too, is strong, despite notable withdrawals. In the men’s 100m, despite the absence of Usain Bolt – who will run only in the 4x100m relay – and Yohan Blake, four of the 13 men who have run 10sec or under in 2014 will compete. The 200m features Warren Weir and Isaac Makwala, two of the five fastest at the distance this year, and the 400m stars Kirani James, the Olympic champion and world leader in 2014.

There is quality in the middle distances too – particularly in the 800m, where the world record holder David Rudisha faces Botswana’s Nijel Amos, who beat him on Friday in Monaco in a world fastest time of 1min 42.45sec. And then there is Mo Farah, confirmed to run the 5,000 and 10,000m although not – sadly – against the toughest of Kenyan challengers. Meanwhile in the heptathlon the top two in the world meet as England’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson faces the Canadian Brianne Theisen-Eaton.

True, there are still plenty of athletes sidestepping the Games, choosing money over medals. But the standard will be higher than in Delhi 2010, where the top-11 ranked men’s 100m sprinters in the Commonwealth didn’t travel and only one of the top 10 women did – a trend repeated across many sports.

Given the cost of putting on major sporting events, it is possible that the Commonwealth Games will one day drift irreversibly towards redundancy. Glasgow may be the last hurrah of an event once called the Empire Games. Yet it will not be surprising if even sceptics find themselves experiencing a sort of London 2012 aftershock: not as intense, or as seismic, or as important, but giddy and enjoyable nonetheless.

SOURCE: www.theguardian.com