Why is this sad ‘festival’ still a thing?
Commonwealth Games are a farcical relic of a different time
AS we tried to make sense of goings-on in Birmingham on Thursday night, we found John Oliver’s voice ringing in our ears. Back when the 2014 event was kicking off in Glasgow, the comic asked the most obvious of questions: ‘The Commonwealth Games – how is this still a thing?’
The stinging takedown on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight, is still widely available on YouTube.
It is less a comic bit than just a series of observations about this most bizarre of sporting festivals. Getting to the nub of the matter, Oliver held up the Games for what they were. ‘The historic display of a once-mighty nation gathering together the countries it lost and finding a way to lose to them once more,’ he concluded.
And that, in essence, is what the Commonwealth Games are. They are a relic of a different time, an age that most normal nations would want to store away deep in the recesses of their psyche and try not to think about ever again. But not Britain, it seems. They apparently still see very little wrong with celebrating colonisation through sport.
The BBC did their utmost on Thursday to dress the Games up as something special. Claire Balding did her best to get excited.
There was Lenny Henry and Simon Le Bon extolling the virtues of Birmingham. And Nadine Dorries, displaying all the intellectual rigour needed in British politics these days, saying that this would put the second-largest city in the UK ‘on the map’.
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There were plenty of pyrotechnics and a performance by Duran Duran, a giant bull and a flyover from the Red Arrows.
It was the sort of thing that made you feel you were missing out on something, if you were eight, which was probably the age I was the last time I wondered why Ireland weren’t at the Commonwealth Games.
But that won’t stop some politicians desperate for publicity in silly season to make another of these pitches that we should have a grown-up conversation about re-joining the Commonwealth.
Fine Gael’s Neale Richmond was the last one to suggest that, in the context of a border poll.
His party colleague Frank Feighan went one step further back in 2017, not only calling for an all-Ireland team to compete in the Games but that Dublin should put their hand up and host the 2022 Games when Durban, the original host, couldn’t justify the debt it was acquiring for a bit of sporting nonsense.
Fortunately, Feighan’s call fell on deaf ears and instead a small, unheralded city called Birmingham stepped into the breach.
If nothing else, the Commonwealth Games Federation, who oversee the Games, should be praised for their perseverance.
Anyone else might have taken Durban’s decision to pull out as a sign that the event has no place in the modern world.
Not the CGF. They decided to plough on regardless.
The CGF’s website makes for interesting reading. They have a section on the relevance of the Games, which brings to mind the phrase ‘if you are explaining, you are losing.’ And they also don’t dodge the distasteful past associated with the whole idea of the Commonwealth.
‘There is no easy way of saying the Commonwealth has a challenging history lined to colonial roots,’ they point out in about as easy a manner as possible, before hurriedly mentioning that ‘work has already started to alter the focus from the hegemony of the British Empire to one of global peace, shared sustainability and prosperity.’
One of the ways that the Games may actually remain relevant was apparent on Thursday when Tom Daley made a stand against the number of Commonwealth nations where homosexuality is still a crime.
That is more than half the competing countries but — and this has to be whispered lightly — they are still enforcing laws that were foisted upon them back in the time that the sun was never setting on the empire.
The Olympic diving champion won’t be back-flipping off the board at the Sandwell Aquatics Centre but his part in the baton relay and his message, as an openly gay athlete, to the 35 Commonwealth States that criminalise same-sex relations, will be remembered for much longer than any athletic achievements over the next week.
And maybe this is where these Games can survive as a concept. Athletes are becoming increasingly muzzled at the Olympics, with the lily-livered International Olympic Committee (IOC) terrified of losing sponsors and the backing of rich states.
Hence, the way athletes at the recent Winter Olympics were told to keep their ethical and human rights concerns quiet.
David Katoatau who won gold for his tiny nation, Kiribati, in Glasgow and then warned the world — or at least, the Commonwealth — that his island was in danger of being lost to the Pacific due to climate change. Eight years on, nobody really listened.
Allowing athletes to use their voice may be one way to ensure that these Games are in step with the modern world — their other solution has been the inclusion of e-sports, which is having a test event in Birmingham.
It is believed the IOC will be observing keenly, with an eye to making gaming an Olympic discipline. At this stage, why not?
And the games seem to mean something to the athletes.
I interviewed boxer Michaela Walsh before the Tokyo Olympics and she talked about how her two Commonwealth experiences stood her in good stead for what to expect in Japan.
Maybe, it did. A couple of Irish records fell in the Aquatics Centre on Friday — given the presence of Australia and England, the pool will always be competitive.
On the same day though, New Zealand hammered Sri Lanka 635 in the men’s rugby sevens, with the Sri Lankans greeting their solitary try as if they won the world cup. No wonder, the All Blacks had beaten them 80-0 at the last Games.
Australia beat Jamaica 82-0 on the same day while England were on the receiving end of a drubbing from Samoa, 34-0. Their netball side made up for it, crushing Trinidad & Tobago 74-22. And New Zealand’s hockey side thrashed Kenya 16-0.
This was all in the first few hours of the first day.
Kinda makes John Oliver’s words ring true, doesn’t it?
Why is the Commonwealth Games still a thing? Or a more succinct observation is said to have come from Usain Bolt during Glasgow 2014. Even though he has denied saying it, the legendary Jamaican sprinter was overheard saying to a team-mate that the Games ‘are a bit s***.’
Probably the most apt description of the whole farrago.
Usain Bolt reportedly called the games ‘s***’