The importance of athletics (and a few nations) to future Commonwealth Games

After a few days of very poor crowds at the 2010 games, organisers had to draft in thousands of schoolchildren and hand out free tickets to the poor to fill empty stadiums, perhaps also influenced by tickets for the events start from 50 rupees (70p), about half the daily wage of a labourer.

India's response to recent 2021 CG innovation strategy also highlights problems associated with some countries giving greater importance to certain sports and/or other competitions.

During October 2021, India indicated it would not send a hockey team to Birmingham because the CG was only 33 days apart from the Asian Games with the latter also act as a qualifier for the 2024 Paris Olympics, albeit it eventually did enter a team.

With shooting then also dropped from the 2022 programme, the Indian Olympic Association president threatened that the country would boycott the Games altogether before the CGF ultimately allowed shooting (and archery) to be hosted in Chandigarh, India as part of the 2022 CG, although the planned competition was later cancelled for a number of reasons including continued uncertainty created by the Covid pandemic.

As it stands, a CG will still take considerable organisation with any host country strongly committed to its ideals regardless of the new desire to downsize the games to make them more attractive to potential hosts.

In 2018, the Gold Coast games hosted 4,426 athletes from 71 Commonwealth Games Associations, with athletics having 952 athletes from 68 nations.

Australian interest in the CG is boosted by its longstanding success given it has placed first at 13 out of the 21 games (compared with England 7 and Canada 1), and has been in the top three for all games except the first games in 1930.

Of Australia's total 936 CG golds, 307 have come from swimming and 196 from athletics.

Of Australia's total 2426 medals, 734 came from swimming and 500 from athletics.

While Australian success on the track at the CGs has waned with only one able-bodied runner winning gold in 2018 (Michael Shelley marathon) and only two 2014 (again Shelley in the marathon and Sally Pearson, it has enjoyed continued success in the walks and field events with a further ten gold medals.

Despite swimming being most popular with a number of events attracting well over 2 million television viewers in 2018, over 2 million also watched the decathlon, the triple jump final, the 4x100m relay and the 10,000m.

Of course, any successful CG requires athletes to be motivated to want to compete, including money to aid training purposes at least.