Let the Games begin /Doyle flies the flag as Scots lead way in opening ceremony
● Music, dance and Aboriginal ceremony declare Australian event officially open
0 Eilidh Doyle leads Scotland as the first team out during the opening ceremony for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast.
As a tropical rainstorm drenched Australia’s “Sunshine State”, Team Scotland led the athletes out for the opening ceremony of the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games yesterday.
Athletics star Eilidh Doyle carried the flag for Scotland at the curtain-raising event for the 21st Games in Australia.
The 2014 Games, hosted by Glasgow, saw Team Scotland win a record 53 medals, including 19 golds. A total of 224 Scottish athletes will compete in the Gold Coast Games, which runs for the next 12 days in the eastern Australian city.
The Games were declared open by the Prince of Wales after a vibrant ceremony which celebrated both the region’s indigenous origins and its modern surfing culture.
“Even though we are half a world away, we are all connected,” said the Prince of Wales, after the final leg of the Queen’s Baton Relay was completed by Australian hurdling star Sally Pearson in Gold Coast’s Cararra Stadium.
A matter of hours earlier, protesters from the Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance group had held up the Baton Relay for 50 minutes as it neared its final destination.
Others continue to dismiss the Commonwealth Games as an increasing anachronism in today’s corporate-fuelled, global sporting age.
But try making such claims to athletes like Tereapii Tapoki, who trained for her shot put and discus disciplines by throwing coconuts back home in her native Cook Islands.
Or the two members of the Kiribati boxing team who have been forced to finish their preparations outdoors because the only boxing ring in their entire country is currently broken.
And only at the Commonwealth Games can septugenarian lawn bowlers mix with the likes of 11-year-old Anna Hursey, who will make her debut for Wales in the table tennis on Thursday.
And only at the Commonwealth Games, one can’t help feeling, could England be confused with The Gambia in the official programme, which proclaimed the capital of no less than the head of the Commonwealth herself to be Banjul.
The Games is no stranger to a royal rumpus: the head of the Delhi Games, Suresh Kalmadi, mistook the Duchess of Cornwall for Princess Diana upon being introduced to the couple in 2010.
Mercifully there were no such embarrassing faux pas on Wednesday night, and the initial torrential downpour made way for the kind of early evening warmth with which this area of the Queensland coast is more accustomed.
With many of its venues just a lifebelt’s throw from the surf and more sun scheduled for the duration of the event, Gold Coast, which lies south-east of Brisbane, appears to offer all the ingredients necessarily to
“Even though we are half a world away, we are all connected”
PRINCE CHARLES
enrich and sustain the Games in defiance of those who wish to denigrate its importance.
Reeling from the recent cricket ball-tampering scandal, hosts Australia will seek to use the Games to restore some much-needed sporting dignity and reclaim top spot in the medals table from England, who topped the list in Glasgow for the first time since 1986.
England for their part have brought out their big guns in the likes of Olympic champions gymnast Max Whitlock, swimmer Adam Peaty and triathlete Alistair Brownlee – who led the team out as flag bearer – while professional preparations could yield a virtual clean sweep of gold medals in the boxing ring. But with respect to those who bring much-needed stardust, it is the sprinkling of athletes from smaller nations who best embody the uniqueness of the Commonwealth Games – and encapsulate why it continues to justify its place on the sporting calendar.
More than 4,500 athletes will represent 71 nations and territories from around the globe in 275 events across 18 sports. Gold Coast 2018 also includes the largest programme of disability sport at a Commonwealth Games.