Thursday, March 28, 2024

Commonwealth Games are set for a huge shake-up with organisers looking to reduce costs


Commonwealth Games are set for a huge shake-up with organisers looking to reduce costs and improve curiosity… which means greater than a DOZEN sports activities face battle to safe their future

  • More than a dozen sports activities face a battle for their Commonwealth Games future 
  • Organisers are looking to lower the variety of obligatory sports activities from 16 to two 
  • These modifications are geared toward lowering costs and growing curiosity within the Games
  • Bosses need to open up internet hosting alternatives to smaller nations too 
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More than a dozen sports activities face a battle for their Commonwealth Games future as bosses combat to protect the occasion’s ‘prestige’.

Following subsequent 12 months’s Games in Birmingham, the variety of obligatory sports activities might be lower from 16 to simply two — athletics and swimming. The complete variety of occasions — 19 in 2022 — can be set to shrink to round 15 transferring forwards.

The modifications, a part of a radical new ‘strategic roadmap’, purpose to reduce costs and improve curiosity by permitting native organisers extra freedom to form their very own schedule.

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More than a dozen sports face an uncertain Commonwealth Games future due to a shake-up

More than a dozen sports activities face an unsure Commonwealth Games future due to a shake-up

It will spark concern for these sports activities at present assured a place, which embrace boxing, badminton and hockey. The future appears notably bleak for non-Olympic occasions akin to squash and netball, for whom the Commonwealth Games is their largest stage.

Bosses need to open up internet hosting alternatives to smaller nations and can encourage cities to select widespread native disciplines — akin to kabaddi in India — in addition to city and e-sports to flip youthful heads.

Surfing, skateboarding and climbing have all not too long ago joined the Olympic calendar.

Bosses are cutting compulsory sports to reduce costs and increase interest in the games

Bosses are reducing obligatory sports activities to reduce costs and improve curiosity within the video games

‘Our Games need to evolve and modernise to ensure we maintain our relevance and prestige,’ mentioned Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) president Dame Louise Martin, who hailed this as ‘the start of an exciting new era’.

‘What we have to do is find the sports that the youth of today work with,’ she advised the BBC. ‘Nothing is off the table.’ 

Athletics and swimming will stay protected, in accordance to the CGF, ‘due to their historical place on the programme since 1930, and based on universality, participation, broadcasting, Para-inclusion, spectator interest and gender balance’.

The different 14 obligatory sports activities for Birmingham now in danger are badminton, boxing, highway biking, creative gymnastics, hockey, judo, garden bowls, netball, rugby sevens, squash, swimming, desk tennis, triathlon, weightlifting/powerlifting and freestyle wrestling.

Commonwealth Games chief Dame Louise Martin said it is the start of 'an exciting new era'

Commonwealth Games chief Dame Louise Martin mentioned it’s the begin of ‘an thrilling new period’

Diving, basketball (each 3×3 and wheelchair), mountain biking, monitor and time trial biking, rhythmic gymnastics, Para-triathlon, seashore volleyball, girls’s T20 cricket and Para-table tennis had been all chosen from a checklist of elective sports activities for the 2022 Games.

The ‘roadmap’ may even encourage ‘co-hosting’ — even presumably ‘to be inclusive of non-Commonwealth hosts.’

‘We’ve been making an attempt laborious to get the smaller nations to host a Games, however they are too small to do it the way in which it’s gone,’ Dame Louise added.

Organisers hope to belatedly announce the hosts for the 2026 Games subsequent 12 months.

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