And so the gold medal for wishful thinking goes to...
Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games bid despite city looking like THIS
WITH its overflowing bins, derelict stores and desolate shopping streets, it hardly looks ready to welcome the world’s elite athletes.
But Glasgow could soon be hosting the Commonwealth Games after the Australian state of Victoria dropped out amid spiralling costs.
On Friday, Commonwealth Games Scotland (CGS) said it was ready to step up and hold the global sporting event, which is now on the hunt for a new host.
That would give Scots the chance to see home-grown heroes such as 2022 Commonwealth Games 10,000 metres champion Eilish McColgan take on some of the best athletes in the world.
But Glasgow, which held the games in 2014, is a far cry from the state of Victoria with its stunning coastlines and its cosmopolitan capital Melbourne. Instead visitors to Scotland’s largest city would have to contest with a rat infestation which has seen refuse workers under attack, crumbling roads and footpaths, and come face-to-face with the country’s worst homelessness crisis.
If held in Glasgow, the 2026 event would cost between £130 and £150million with most of the funding generated by ticket sales, sponsorship and TV rights.
Annie Wells, of the Scottish Tories, said Glasgow stepping in was ‘worth exploring’.
However, the Glasgow MSP added: ‘The truth is years of savage SNP cuts have decimated the city I love and left it in a state of disrepair – as any visitor to Sauchiehall Street will testify.’
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the 2014 Games was a ‘great advert for Glasgow’, but added: ‘If you look at Glasgow of 2014 it was a confident, outward looking city that really looked like it was a global destination.
‘The ten years that followed have seen the city centre decimated, you’ve seen local infrastructure not being invested in, you’ve seen community funding reduced and you’ve seen poverty and inequality increase.’
CGS commissioned a feasibility study in December to assess if Glasgow could be an alternate host. It believes the Games can be held on time and within budget.
CGS chairman Ian Reid said: ‘We believe our concept provides a viable solution which won’t involve significant sums of public funding.’ A final decision on a venue will be made next month, with Glasgow in contention if no other viable host can be secured.
Glasgow City Council has said there is no bid ‘at this stage’.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The Commonwealth Games Federation has confirmed it is working with a number of associations to reset the games.
‘We continue to engage with Commonwealth Games Scotland on their proposals.’
Meanwhile, conservationists have likened parts of Glasgow to a bomb site, and hit out at a city falling into ‘third world’ decline. Stuart Robertson, of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, said Sauchiehall Street looked as if it ‘has been bombed’.
Mail columnist and broadcaster Andrew Neil has described the state of Glasgow as ‘a scandal’.
Mr Neil, from Paisley, said: ‘It is back in the doldrums, under an SNP tutelage best symbolised by an epidemic of rats, a profusion of litter, street after street of boarded-up shops – and the return of Victorian diseases such as rickets.’