Friendly, but under fire E-mail
By JOHN HUXLEY  
The Sydney Morning Herald
March 11, 2006

It's not quite the Empire Strikes Back, but the Commonwealth Games still has its place in a fast-paced global village, writes John Huxley.

WHEN Claire Mallett says that competing at the Commonwealth Games is a dream come true, she really, really means it. What's more, she even has the paperwork to prove it.

Several years ago her classmates at Burraneer Bay school were asked to describe what they wanted to achieve in life. "Here's what I did," she says, proudly producing an A4-size poster.

In the centre is a photograph of Claire, tall and skinny, receiving a medal at a state sports carnival. Above it she has written, "I am ten years old and I love athletics - especially high jump. I want to go to the Commonwealth Games when I grow up. Thanks."

With barely a week to go before her competition starts, the 21-year-old high-jumper from Cronulla can scarcely contain her excitement. "I'm thrilled. I always seem to do my best in big competitions. So I'm hoping the Games will really get me going."

But her enthusiasm for an event that began as the Empire Games more than 75 years ago, with fewer than a dozen nations and 400 athletes, only 11 of them Australian, is not shared by everyone. Especially not in Australia.

The competition has not even started but already the critics - who traditionally make their entry just before the teams - have been complaining that the Games are anachronistic, amateurish, one-sided and, most damaging of all, irrelevant.

The cynics insist that while the Olympic Games have grown, the games of the old empire are being crowded off the world sporting stage by world championships, the Student Games and regional competitions such as the Pan-Pacs and Asian Games.

They point out many top athletes will stay away. Some, such as the swimmers Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett, and the English marathon runner Paula Radcliffe, are ill or injured. Others, including some of the world's top cyclists and Kenya's crack middle-distance runners, have decided their priorities lie on the lucrative European circuits.

The cynics claim, too, that while 4500 athletes from 71 countries will compete, the Games remain an uneven competition involving one superpower, Australia, two or three wannabes in England, South Africa and Canada, and dozens of also-rans, swams and cycles.

And when the Games end, the same Australian critics will complain that the medals are no more than "fool's gold", too easily won at an event famously described by one newspaper editor as "little more than a local sports carnival".

So, what is the point of the Commonwealth Games? Whatever their success in Melbourne, will they survive for much longer the setting of the sun on the empire that produced them?

If they are to continue, how can what was originally intended as a low-cost, "no frills" event reinvent itself to withstand the political, commercial and financial pressures of the 21st century?

And, if they are to be repackaged, how can the unique spirit of the self-styled "Friendly Games", free from what their founding fathers called "the excessive stimulus and babel of the international stadium", be preserved?

In fact, the event has proved remarkably resilient, says Perry Crosswhite, chief executive of the Australian Commonwealth Games Association, pointing out that criticisms - even over the playing of God Save the Queen, go back to the 1960s.

"Of course, the Games are an anachronism. It's an accident of history that brings together an interesting collection of countries, with broadly common backgrounds, common values." Countries as small as St Helena (population barely 3000) and as big as India (more than 1 billion) will take part.

The Games are also fragile, Crosswhite concedes. "The challenge is to meet the expectations of people who come to the Games because they want a good, friendly experience, free from the politics and pressure of other world events but also good competition," he says.

"If the sport is diminished, if the competition levels don't stack up, the Games would quickly lose their prestige, their significance, their attraction - especially in Australia, where standards tend to be higher."

But hasn't that happened already? Not at all, insists American-born Crosswhite, who represented the US in basketball at three Olympics before switching to sports administration.

"You really have to look at the Games, event by event, sport by sport. In some, the very best international athletes will be competing." They include the world's fastest man, the Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell, and some of the world's top swimmers, mainly Australian.

In some sports, such as netball, squash, rugby sevens and, not surprisingly, lawn bowls, the Melbourne Games are the equivalent of world championships, while badminton, men's and women's hockey, and certain weightlifting divisions are not far short of that standard.

Track and field? Well, the competition will be patchy. As Athletics Australia's national performance manager, Max Binnington, said recently, some of the nation's 106 athletes are "bloody lucky" to be there.

Though no official will admit it, the size of the team appears to have been determined more by the need to attract supporters to morning sessions at the huge MCG, than by the belief that the chosen 106 will win medals.

But then surely most of the athletes, from most of the 71 countries, will travel to Melbourne hopefully, but with little real chance of winning a medal.

After all, such has been Australia's domination that before the 2002 Games in Manchester, one senior team official joked that the old battle cry of "come on, Aussie, come on" should be replaced. "Slow down, Aussie, slow down," he argued, could give smaller, poorer, weaker countries a chance to catch up. In the event, Australia still headed the medal table, winning 207 of the 895 medals on offer, 82 of them gold.

This time, Crosswhite and his colleagues have set the Australian team, the biggest ever, a more challenging target of 208 medals, 88 of them gold. Despite their home town advantage, he believes they will be pushed to achieve it. "It's getting tougher and tougher," he says.

"It depends who turns up on the day, but I think all the money that England has put into sport will start paying off. And I'm expecting the South Africans to make a big improvement. The Games are a great stage for them."

Whoever wins the medals, he adds, they will not come as cheaply as in the past. The decision to scrap many of the double bronzes, given to losing semi-finalists in some sports, and to cut the number of medals on offer in each weightlifting division, will cut the total on offer by 150.

In any case, Crosswhite adds, while most medals are still won by the usual suspects, the number of countries enjoying success has increased. "Twenty years or so ago, only about 10 won medals. These days it's between 25 and 30."

Ultimately, of course, defenders of the Commonwealth Games would argue that the event is not just about winning medals. It's as much about blooding promising newcomers (see panel), about farewelling old favourites, about urban renewal of host cities, about having a good time.

And fragile though the Games and their finances may be (much of the cost of Melbourne's 10-day sporting binge will be borne by the Victorian and federal governments), there seems to be no shortage of athletes, spectators and even host cities still looking for a good time.

In 2010 the Games will be hosted by New Delhi, "a huge step into the unknown" as one senior Games official put it, but one that seemed inevitable when the most populous Commonwealth member put in a convincing bid.

Beyond that, says Crosswhite, as many as four, very different, cities may be competing to stage the 2014 Games: Glasgow; Halifax, Nova Scotia; the Nigerian capital of Abuja; and one of the South African provincial capitals.

Somehow, each must come up with a plan that is, on the one hand, competitive and commercially attractive and, on the other, fair and inclusive.

No easy task, but one upon which the future of the Friendly Games, in which girls like Claire Mallet dreamed of competing, depends.