OPINION: Time has come to scrap slimmed down Commonwealth Games

Having slashed nine sporting codes from the next Commonwealth Games in 2026, to be held in Glasgow, we need to ask, what is even the point of having this event?

If you didn’t know, Glasgow in Scotland, hosts not so long ago in 2014, will now host the Games for a second time in 12 years after Australian state, Victoria, pulled out last year because of rising costs. This was confirmed by organisers on Tuesday.

And, the slimmed down Games in two years’ time will now only feature 10 sports as opposed to the 19 on show at Birmingham in 2022. This is a blow for many athletes, also in South Africa, as the triathlon, diving, hockey, T20 cricket, squash, badminton and Sevens rugby are among the sports that will no longer feature.

According to Commonwealth Games leadership “it’s just not deliverable or affordable for this timeframe.”

Chequered history

The new-look schedule will feature athletics and para athletics, swimming and para swimming, artistic gymnastics, track cycling and para track cycling, netball, weightlifting and para powerlifting, boxing, judo, bowls and para bowls, as well as 3×3 basketball and 3×3 wheelchair basketball.

The biggest question of all though regarding this four-yearly event is, what is the point of having a sporting contest called the Commonwealth Games anyway?

My colleague Wesley Botton mentioned this very issue in a column two years ago, saying, “Every four years, athletes from around the globe converge to compete under the banner of an organisation which is led (at least on paper) by the Queen of England (now King). A sporting celebration in memory of a former colony that hardly bathed itself in glory while trying to take over the world.

“There are 56 countries which remain in the Commonwealth of Nations, but it is little more than an ‘Old Boys’ club which exists more in spirit than it does in reality.”

Has anything changed? Is it not still a waste of time?

Every sporting code has its own league or competition, some on a global scale, for young aspiring athletes to work towards, for betterment and growth and experience. And, we have the Olympics every four years where the best are measured against each other across multiple codes.

Perhaps the time has come to scrap these Games altogether.