By Graham Thomas
The slimming industry has always been a place for chancers with dubious strategies and now it appears they have moved into the Commonwealth Games.
The only multi-sport tournament where Wales competes as an independent nation is being “slimmed down” in the words of some of the organisers, so that it is “lean and healthy.”
Except it isn’t, unless you view a skeleton as healthy, since the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games looks like a skeleton service compared to what has gone before.
Only 10 sports will be included, compared to the 19 that formed the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022.
So, there will be no rugby sevens, hockey, road cycling, badminton, triathlon, table tennis, squash or wrestling.
It means no platform for the likes of Welsh cyclists Josh Tarling and Stevie Wiliams, Welsh table tennis players Anna Hursey and Charlotte Carey, or Welsh squash players Joel Makin and Tesni Evans.
The new “slimmed down” version is being sold as the future for the Commonwealth Games because of rising costs, but it looks more like a poor compromise than a bold new strategy for the future.
Few countries are doing Commonwealth cartwheels. Scotland sound a bit embarrassed at hosting a party where the usual spread has been replaced by some supermarket sandwiches.
Australia are unhappy, too. They paid £100m in compensation because Victoria pulled out of hosting the 2026 Games – only to now find what they are funding is a half-hearted and half-cost version.
It’s like being charged full price for a round at the bar, even though it’s happy hour.
If they had known a 10-sport, no new venues or athletes’ village cut-price deal was on the table, they would probably have funded that themselves.
All this widespread disappointment simply serves to prove that the Commonwealth Games needs much more than scaling back if it’s to survive.
It needs some big, bold thinking and radical re-imagining if it is to realistically continue beyond the Glasgow edition.
Does anyone under the age of 40 even know what the Commonwealth is, apart from a vague notion that it’s something to do with the old British Empire and that the royals seem to be involved?
If the concept is outdated, the Games needs a new one, a new structure, and perhaps a new name.
If you think the old empire influence and image is long gone, just check out the Commonwealth Games Federation current structure. It’s headquartered in the UK, the patron is King Charles and the vice-patron is the Duke of Edinburgh. The president is Chris Jenkins, a long-serving Games official from Wales.
Here’s an idea. Get rid of King Charles and make Usain Bolt – a Commonwealth Games gold medalist in Glasgow in 2014 – the figurehead, instead.
He would be popular around the world and would have the added benefit that young people would understand what he had done to earn his position.
If the era of the one-city host has become too expensive, then get rid of that, too.
Let’s have a series of Commonwealth Championships for each sport, that run through a calendar year and don’t need the athletes from 74 countries all needing to get together at the same time.
The athletics could be held at Independence Park in Jamaica, with Bolt handing out the medals, the boxing might be hosted in Canada with Lennox Lewis doing the same.
We could have the hockey in India, the Sevens rugby in New Zealand, the netball in Malawi, the squash in Pakistan, the triathlon in Malaysia and the weightlifting in Nigeria.
These are all countries that are never going to have cities that can host an entire Commonwealth Games – even if they have held them before.
But they could host one sport as part of a Commonwealth Games year of activities.
Fans would see top class competition, athletes would get to wear the vest of their nation, TV rights could be sold, and best of all, there wouldn’t need to be a king or trailing queen in sight.
