Victoria’s withdrawal as 2026 host should be a catalyst for a sustainable way of staging major tournaments and meetingsThe decision by Victoria’s government to pull out of hosting the Commonwealth Games issues a broader challenge to sports leaders, governments, but also athletes and citizens around the world. This crisis goes beyond the growing indifference to the purpose of the event, originally founded as the Empire Games in 1930. The Olympics faces a similar struggle with just two bids for the 2024 Summer Games, with Paris and Los Angeles awarded 2024 and 2028 respectively, and only Brisbane bidding for 2032.In the race for the 2022 Winter Olympics, at least five potential host cities, all western democracies, withdrew from the bidding process...
The International Olympic Committee wants to find a pathway for Russians to compete in Paris despite the war in UkrainePicture the mise-en-scène in Paris next year, on the opening day of the Olympics. At the final of the 10m air rifle shooting mixed team event, the Russian Sergey Kamenskiy presses his eye to his gun, squeezes the trigger, and – a millisecond later – is triumphantly celebrating gold. Meanwhile 1,500 miles away in Kyiv, rubble from homes and hospitals continues to pile up, along with the bodies of the dead.Far fetched? Hardly. The International Olympic Committee is determined to establish a pathway for Russians to compete in Paris. And it won’t be deterred by widespread condemnation from Ukrainian athletes, or...
Governing bodies are using weasel words, instead of the plain ones needed: invasion, war, murderEarly last Thursday, overcome by the desire to do something, anything, however petty, to try to fight off that sense of desperate futility, I started sending out emails to the sports federations who had events scheduled in Russia this year asking if they were going to cancel them. There were already reports that Uefa was talking about moving the Champions League final, later that day the FIA announced it was cancelling the Russian GP, and Rugby Europe that it was calling off Russia’s upcoming match against Georgia. A lot of the Olympic sports, though, were moving a little more slowly.Fina, which was due to hold two...
Swimming is the latest sport to become embroiled in discord but there are some signs of courteous, informed discussion tooIt is funny how times change. The Guardian has obtained a letter, written in 2003 by Dr Richard Budgett, in which he discusses the consequences of trans women competing in women’s sport. Responding to a government inquiry, Budgett, then at the British Olympic Association, states: “The effect of allowing male transsexuals to compete as women would be to make competition unfair and potentially dangerous in some sports and would undermine women’s sports.”This would have been an interesting answer at the time. It is even more so now. Society has shifted. Language has changed. Budgett is now medical and scientific director at...
Simply replacing horse riding with cycling, as proposed, would not tackle the Olympic sport’s anachronistic make-upNow here’s an intriguing proposition for Guardian readers, a letter from Major General EHH Allenby, inspector of cavalry, aka the Bloody Bull, on behalf of the British Olympic Council, published on Thursday 7 August 1913, calling for volunteers to step forward for the British team in the new Olympic discipline of modern pentathlon at the Berlin Games in 1916. “The competition consists of the following five events,” Allenby explained, “revolver or pistol shooting at a whole figure decimal target, distance, 25m, swimming, 300m free style, fencing, weapon; epee, riding cross-country, 5,000m, cross-country running, 4,000m.” Tempted?The Guardian, it has to be said, didn’t go in much...