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My time at the ‘Fun’ games
2022-08-22
By John Williams, Associate Professor of Sociology
I attended the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow back in 2014. Glasgow is a great city but, naturally, it rained. In track and field, the great Usain Bolt was nursing an injury but he competed for Jamaica, nevertheless, in both the 200 metres and the relay. We were only denied seeing him in his blue ribbon 100 metres event. In his only press conference in Scotland, bizarrely, Bolt was asked about the Israeli/Palestine conflict, the upcoming Scottish referendum, and had he ever worn a kilt? Unsurprisingly, he looked very puzzled and demurred – but he did not scoot back home. So, the chance to see, in the flesh, the greatest ever was just too much to miss. Of course, Bolt glided home, even under leaden Scottish skies.
I was there last week in Birmingham, too, for the 2022 Games. This time it was sun, sun, sun. But just as Usain Bolt was about the only bona fide global superstar to show up in Glasgow, so it was difficult to spot the very best Commonwealth athletes present in the West Midlands, though integrating para-athletics into the main programme was an undoubted success. Okay, I’ll give you Adam Peaty in the breast-stroke swimming as a world leader, despite his shock defeat. And Elaine Thompson-Herah’s sprint double for Jamaica on the track was of the very highest class, almost matching Bolt’s best work in 2014. Almost.
I was also at the beach volleyball in Smithfield’s in the centre of the city (a pleasing win for the women from Vanuatu) and at the women’s +87kg weightlifting showdown in the post-industrial desert that is the NEC. I was there to see England’s world class lifter, Emily Campbell, defeat all-comers in front of a raucous and patriotic full house. So, there really was some sporting excellence about, if you just looked hard enough. The men’s rugby sevens final, for example, played in Coventry, was brutally world leading. The women’s cricket and netball also excelled in involving all the elite nations – they are quintessential Commonwealth exercises.
But the Games also comes with a homely kind of chaos wrapped all around and through it. Using the Military was considered an option after early queueing and access problems at venues. Gambian athletes, for example, missed their 100m heats because of visa issues. Commonwealth track cyclists, competing in London, were soon catapulting themselves into spectators. The weightlifting at the NEC inexplicably began half an hour late, and one competitor was forced to lift more than she wanted to, simply because the weights had been misloaded. Meanwhile, the rugby boys cut up the turf so badly in the Coventry Arena that the Sky Blues of Coventry City had to call off their early season home football fixtures. And so on.
Like it or not – and medallists will contest this – the Commonwealth Games are really an event in which taking part, and a get-by-and-mend approach to performance, is often celebrated much more heartily than excellence. Malta’s Elisia Scicluna, for example, finished her lifts at the NEC more than 100kg behind the winner Emily Campbell, but nevertheless she looked thrilled and was cheered to the rafters for being there. As was Mathakane Letsie from Lesotho, who may have appeared to be in a tight finish with Scotland’s Eilish McColgan for gold in the women’s 10,000 metres on the track, but was actually being lapped by the Scot for the third time. Her own solo effort later, exhausted and alone staggering down the home straight, nearly brought the house down at the Alexandra Stadium. In the jumping competitions, many of those involved in finals were producing outcomes easily matched elsewhere by much more junior athletes. But they were cheered home, one and all. These are the elite ‘fun’ Games.
So, a few things might be pretty obvious by now. Firstly, in sporting terms ‘the Commonwealth’ is no longer just some redundant colonialist enterprise of Empire, but a kind of patrician club to which you might be invited with 71 other nations and territories, to compete in less taxing circumstances at four-yearly intervals for medals. Vanuatu and Cameroon, anyone? Secondly, being a ‘national champion’ is usually enough to secure an invite, no matter the international level of your individual performance. The more diverse, the merrier is the admirable credo of the Games, rather than seeking out the best of the best. And, thirdly, many of the eligible, elite level, athletes were, anyway, busying themselves preparing for other, more rewarding, activity. The top Jamaicans were little present in track and field. Squeezed between World and European championships, or fee-paying Diamond League fixtures, these Games are not much of an attraction anymore for the very best competitors.
Not that the Games missed out on trying to broaden their spectator appeal to the young – except, perhaps, in miserably underestimating the number of female toilets required. The crowds in Birmingham often had at least as many women as men present – the netball and other women’s events, even more so. Their needs are perfectly predictable, but often poorly served. Whether it was cricket, short form basketball, track and field, beach volleyball, or weightlifting, the Games’ soundtrack was relentlessly a House or Garage vibe. The fusion between sport and music is ongoing, of course, and the thudding bass of the resident DJ, or pleas from commentators for crowds to, ‘Make some noise’, are now ever-presents on the sporting scene. Even if you want to, it is often very difficult to escape.
And this was partly because hosting a major international track and field event, in a £72m refitted stadium now temporarily housing 30,000 people, is a considerable logistical challenge, even if one has a decent mainline transport hub in the immediate vicinity. In Glasgow the national football stadium, the central Hampden Park, housed the athletics. No problem. But at the parking-free Alexandra Stadium in distant Perry Barr, pretty much everyone had to be ferried, to and from the venue, by bus each night. This proved to be a major undertaking. To the frustration of the stadium announcer, it was not just the tumbling English summer temperatures that were sending crowds home early from the evening athletics sessions. It was the realisation that it would be a tough battle just to clear the immediate area at night in queues and fleets of borrowed double-deckers.
Added to this, there are, of course, no late trains from Birmingham to the East Midlands, not even for the period of the Commonwealth Games. So, travellers like ourselves from Leicester – a modest 45 miles away – had no option but to drive to somewhere nearby before taking advantage of the free travel on public transport for ticket holders in the Birmingham area. Some considerable imagination was required here.
So, on balance was it £780m well spent by the Birmingham hosts to resource and manage the Games? Most events, no matter how obscure, were well supported – morning athletics sessions hardly sell out anywhere in the world, but they did here. The British public have a real thirst for consuming international sport, that is very clear. They also do love a tryer. The Commonwealth Games also mirrored well the cosmopolitanism of Birmingham itself, even if the powerful developed, mainly white, nations eventually dominated the medals table. And Britain and Australia seem the only nations rich enough to host the Games these days. Their future seems uncertain, at best.
The Birmingham volunteers reflected well young, modern Britain and those involved were relentlessly positive, cheerful and helpful. We also saw some great dancing from young locals during the breaks in the minor sports. Though the crowds – the paying customers – for many centres often lacked for ethnic diversity, the aquatic events in the British South Asian area of Smethwick, perhaps especially so. In place marketing terms, the Games will certainly increase the international profile of the city of Birmingham– global sport does that – and plenty of local residents have been quoted expressing their ‘pride’ about Birmingham rising to the challenge. Making people feel good about where they live is a very legitimate goal of hosting major sporting events. The whole city seemed excited and engaged. But how long does this positivity last? Taking on things of this scale, with both ambition and vigour, making it a success and celebrating global difference in a local context is, in a sense, what local governance should be ‘for’, though arguments will soon begin, no doubt, around the important, but slippery, notion of legacy.
Will hosting the Games inspire more local kids in the West Midlands into doing more sport? Will it help fitness and undo racism and disadvantage? Sadly, not on past records unless, that is, serious facility and coaching investment follows. It seldom does. But hosting the Games might yet improve local young people’s knowledge of the world and of its geography. Exactly where is Vanuatu anyway?