Commonwealth Games organisers will win no medals
The recent rap on the knuckles from the Commonwealth Games Federation for the Delhi organisers of the 2010 Commonwealth Games is perhaps much too gentle a reprimand for a body that is fast losing control over the event. The Federation’s representatives, here for a review meeting with the organisers and other government agencies, warned that “the Games planning...is behind schedule and must be accelerated immediately.” Earlier too, the parliamentary standing committee for the human resource development ministry had expressed its “apprehension about timely completion of various stadiums, games village and other facilities”. It is doubtful, however, if such warnings will produce anything more than a mad rush to complete as many projects as possible before the athletes step on to the track, come October 2010.
The pity is events such as these are more than just a construction carnival. Besides kickstarting urban regeneration (as exemplified so wonderfully by Sydney when it hosted the 2000 Olympics), they are meant to set off a sporting revolution in the host nation. It is reasonable to expect that the prospect of winning in front of home fans on home turf would galvanise a new generation of athletes. Failing that, the games become no more than the spectacles of ancient Rome, serving primarily to distract the assembled hordes from the glaring failings and excesses of the rulers. But somewhere, that key element—providing funding and preparation of athletes for the games—seems to have escaped the attention of the babus.
For India’s sports officials, bagging the rights to an event seems to be an end in itself. The fact that the only two bidders for the next Commonwealth Games are Glasgow in Scotland and Abuja in Nigeria, should put that in perspective. Bagging the Commonwealth games was no achievement. Running it efficiently and using it to give a new direction to the moribund sports infrastructure in the country are the hard goals the organisers should have set themselves. Instead, as the games draw closer, the lack of coordination between the various agencies will only get worse. Nowhere is that more evident than in the DDA’s auction of hotel plots which have yielded little by way of adding new rooms to the city so far.
The answer to such amateurishness would have been to appoint professional agencies to organise and manage the event. The organisers of the Sydney Olympics (universally acknowledged as the best ever) appointed a competition manager for each sport five years before the event. The objective was for those selected to attend the Atlanta Olympic Games as a major learning exercise in staging Olympic competition in that sport. Indeed, Sydney offers a perfect guide to our bumbling babus. The state government had completed construction of nearly $410 million worth of sports facilities even during the bidding campaign to host the Games and nearly 80% of the facilities were completed by the time the International Olympic Committee awarded the games to the city. By 1998, the city was staging its biggest annual event, the Royal Easter Show at Sydney Olympic Park as the first of a series of ‘non-Olympic test events’ to test the operational capabilities of the organisers. With some of the best companies and executives in the world, it’s a shame that we have a government which can’t hope to match such efficiency.
The recent rap on the knuckles from the Commonwealth Games Federation for the Delhi organisers of the 2010 Commonwealth Games is perhaps much too gentle a reprimand for a body that is fast losing control over the event. The Federation’s representatives, here for a review meeting with the organisers and other government agencies, warned that “the Games planning...is behind schedule and must be accelerated immediately.” Earlier too, the parliamentary standing committee for the human resource development ministry had expressed its “apprehension about timely completion of various stadiums, games village and other facilities”. It is doubtful, however, if such warnings will produce anything more than a mad rush to complete as many projects as possible before the athletes step on to the track, come October 2010.
The pity is events such as these are more than just a construction carnival. Besides kickstarting urban regeneration (as exemplified so wonderfully by Sydney when it hosted the 2000 Olympics), they are meant to set off a sporting revolution in the host nation. It is reasonable to expect that the prospect of winning in front of home fans on home turf would galvanise a new generation of athletes. Failing that, the games become no more than the spectacles of ancient Rome, serving primarily to distract the assembled hordes from the glaring failings and excesses of the rulers. But somewhere, that key element—providing funding and preparation of athletes for the games—seems to have escaped the attention of the babus.
For India’s sports officials, bagging the rights to an event seems to be an end in itself. The fact that the only two bidders for the next Commonwealth Games are Glasgow in Scotland and Abuja in Nigeria, should put that in perspective. Bagging the Commonwealth games was no achievement. Running it efficiently and using it to give a new direction to the moribund sports infrastructure in the country are the hard goals the organisers should have set themselves. Instead, as the games draw closer, the lack of coordination between the various agencies will only get worse. Nowhere is that more evident than in the DDA’s auction of hotel plots which have yielded little by way of adding new rooms to the city so far.
The answer to such amateurishness would have been to appoint professional agencies to organise and manage the event. The organisers of the Sydney Olympics (universally acknowledged as the best ever) appointed a competition manager for each sport five years before the event. The objective was for those selected to attend the Atlanta Olympic Games as a major learning exercise in staging Olympic competition in that sport. Indeed, Sydney offers a perfect guide to our bumbling babus. The state government had completed construction of nearly $410 million worth of sports facilities even during the bidding campaign to host the Games and nearly 80% of the facilities were completed by the time the International Olympic Committee awarded the games to the city. By 1998, the city was staging its biggest annual event, the Royal Easter Show at Sydney Olympic Park as the first of a series of ‘non-Olympic test events’ to test the operational capabilities of the organisers. With some of the best companies and executives in the world, it’s a shame that we have a government which can’t hope to match such efficiency.