GOLDEN WONDER
Under heavy skies – in the ‘Sunshine State’ – Prince Charles declares 21st Commonwealth Games open
Fireworks were set off as the final performance takes place during the opening ceremony for the 2018 Commonwealth Games at the Carrara Stadium in the Gold Coast, Australia. The Prince of Wales opened the event on behalf of the Queen.
BATHED IN a sea of blue television lights, a tropical storm crashing around him, Prince Charles might have had the words of John Astley Cooper in mind when he declared at the start of the Commonwealth Games: “Even though we are half a world away, we are all connected.”
Cooper, the clergyman who invented the modern Games at the turn of the last century, had written that a “pan-Britannic, pan-Anglican contest” every four years would be a means of “increasing goodwill and good understanding of the British Empire”.
The Empire now truncated to a Commonwealth, Charles stood his ground as he addressed the not-quite-sold out crowd at the Cararra Stadium on Australia’s Gold Coast.
Whether they heard him was open to debate – most were not sheltered by the stadium’s partial roof, nor by umbrellas, which had been outlawed lest they spoil the view for others who had paid £200 upwards to be there. Raincoats and ponchos had been recommended instead by organisers in Queensland, which is fond of calling itself the Sunshine State. It was the 21st such opening ceremony and the second over which Charles had presided. His great-grandfather, George V, had opened the first, in London, in 1911. Four nations competed then, in nine events. This time, 275 events are in play, across 17 sports and by 70 nations. At 7pm local time, they began to make their appearances. Athletes from major nations and tiny Pacific atolls marched shoulder to soggy shoulder during a parade of nations that had been designed to celebrate Queensland’s indigenous origins and its modern surfing culture. Alistair Brownlee, the Yorkshire double Olympic and World champion triathlete, carried the English flag. It was a moment, he said, he would always remember.
Less feted but no less dedicated were Tereapii Tapoki, who trained for her shot put and discus events by throwing coconuts back home in the Cook Islands, and the two Kiribati boxers who had been forced to finish their preparations outdoors because the only boxing ring in their country was broken.
Only at the Commonwealth Games could they mix with septugenarian lawn bowlers and with the 11-year-old Anna Hursey, who was due to make her debut for Wales in the table tennis today.
And only at these games could England be confused with Gambia in the official programme, which had somehow listed it as an African country whose capital is Banjul.
Worse had happened before. At the 2010 Games, beset by allegations of corruption, the head of the organising committee mistook the Duchess of Cornwall for Princess Diana upon being introduced.
This time around, Australia will want to use the event to restore some sporting dignity following last month’s balltampering cricket fiasco, and to reclaim the top spot in the medals table from England, who seized it in Glasgow four years ago, for the first time since 1986.
The English team brought out its big guns yesterday. Besides Brownlee, there was the gymnast Max Whitlock and the swimmer Adam Peaty, while its fighters could yield a virtual clean sweep of gold medals in the boxing ring.
The Games have never been able to entirely escape the criticism that in an increasingly corporate sporting age, they are something of an anachronism.
But with the sprinkling of athletes from lesser nations embodying the uniqueness of the event, and with many of the venues just a lifebelt’s throw from the surf, the Gold Coast gathering could yet be a classic.
Even though we are half a world away, we are all connected. Prince Charles’s address.