Would solve a lot of problems, including helping reposition the Games as explicitly 'post-colonial' - i.e far from celebrating Empir, they now celebrate the END of empire.
My impression is that it's mostly white westerners that complain about Comm Games' colonial origin. The loudest even seem to be from a certain powerful country that's not even part of the Commonwealth.
I saw SBS will be showing some events. Is that the first time they will do so?
I'm not sure if they did in the past but I'm glad they're at least covering all the swimming finals this year. It looks like for most other sports a VPN will be needed.
I really do not understand why many proposals are based on new venues or venues which need major upgrade. Only to meet the demands of the international federations?
When was the last time we did see full stands at a major competition? London 2012? After that many events seemed to be held in venues too big for the interested public. It was a shame looking at the stream of the European Games in 2023. Athletics held in a 50.000-venue with hardly any spectators.
Lot of venues build for big events seem te be unused or do not need the capacity after the Games: Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, Rio 2016, World Cup soccer in South Africa and Qatar……
In order to ‘survive’ a critical review of the way forward seems te be helpfull…..
This debacle wasn't caused by demands of international organisations/federations but mostly of the Victorian government's making. They could've hosted a budget concious Comm Games but instead chose this bloated and wasteful regional model instead. This was an entirely self-inflicted failure.
Arguably Swimming in Particular is one of the more expensive sports to host because they are few facilities that are both big enough and have enough seats to not make it seem tiny. Like London still has the Olympic pool but the seating facilities are pretty small and couldn’t really be used for an able bodied world champs or a commonwealth games. (I attended a session of the World Para there in 2019.)
Victoria had a perfectly fine swimming venue that already hosted swimming in 2006 and also the world short course swimming champs in December but the government refused to use any venues in Melbourne.
I don't think it will be a catalyst for them to join Asia. It's not like the Commonwealth Games provide much sporting opportunity for Australia/New Zealand. It's only one event every four years.
Australia/New Zealand seem to be content on focusing on World Championships/World Cup events. Money wise it is still expensive for them to travel to Asia for continental events. This isn't Europe where you can drive to multiple European countries (or take a cheap airline).
A limited amount of integration has already started with Australia joining Asia for football and Oceanian countres are also allowed to compete at Asian Games in certain sports.
Posted (edited)
My impression is that it's mostly white westerners that complain about Comm Games' colonial origin. The loudest even seem to be from a certain powerful country that's not even part of the Commonwealth.
Edited by dullardLink to post
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