Watch Opening Ceremony Live Commonwealth Game 2014 Online Streaming Broadcast. The Commonwealth Games, in scale, budget, status, sporting achievement
and just about everything else, is not the Olympics, although like the
Olympics and any other major sporting event worth its salt it does come
with an overspend – in Glasgow’s case it’s in the region of £200m.
Yet there are sporting
treats in store, and some fascinating narratives to be told. On Thursday
Sir Bradley Wiggins returns to the track, a waned star desperately
seeking a future. Then there is Mo Farah and his attempt to claim
another 5,000/10,000m double. And Usain Bolt’s scheduled appearance in
the 100m relay – even that brief outing will sprinkle stardust on the
Games. Chad le Clos swimming, Tom Daley diving, the brilliant David
Rudisha in the 800m, Kirani James in the 400m – there is enough
world-class quality here to raise hopes of something to remember. Beyond
that there is plenty to whet the appetite and attract the curious;
rugby sevens, netball’s big week out of the shadows, squash’s chance to
show off. The BBC is giving this Olympic standard coverage and that
alone will do wonders for Glasgow (providing everything works).
For Glasgow 2014, a Games set to introduce
itself this evening in front of an enthusiastic home audience, but one
that gets ever more sceptically the greater the distance traveled from
Celtic Park, it would be a mistake to think London 2012 Mark II. As the
ceremony progresses it will soon become clear that is an unfair and
unnecessary comparison, whatever Alex Salmond might suggest. Instead,
rewind a further decade and think Manchester 2002.
This is an oddity of an event, begun by a Canadian called Melville Marks
Robinson who had become irritated by the Americans’ win-at-all-costs
attitude to the Olympics. Robinson wanted it to be the Friendly Games.
Some 80 years later that tag remains and today that is not an ambition
likely to strike a chord with any professional athlete no matter their
nationality. Professional sport has never been more about winning. There
is though still a place for the Commonwealth Games, both as a sporting
event and an event that a city such as Glasgow wants to host and will
benefit from doing so.
“These Games have been seven years in the making,” said Salmond when
he had recalibrated his sights. “They will take place over 11 days but
their effects will be felt for generations. The Games have created
employment opportunities all over Scotland for thousands of young
people. These Games will change the lives of people in this country for
the better. The venues have been open for some time and they are already
proving to be powerful investments, paying their way before the Games
has started.”
There is truth in there. The area around Celtic Park
– home of tonight’s opening ceremony – Glasgow’s east end, will benefit
from the Games, as part of a wider and longer term regeneration of
parts of the city, and sport in Scotland will benefit from the
facilities the Games leave behind.
For British athletes it is a curious experience, breaking off from
the carefully laid Olympic plans to race each other – “a bit weird” is
how Elinor Barker, the bright young Welsh cyclist, described the
prospect of taking on the likes of Trott and Scotland’s Katie Archibald,
her British team-mates in the pursuit.
What
any Games needs is large crowds – ticket sales have been decent but
there are still plenty available – creating a buoyant atmosphere (see
London and Manchester) and to get that atmosphere nothing gets the party
started like a home success. Glasgow wants to put on the best
Commonwealth Games and those in charge of the hosts’ team are promising
to match that with a best-ever Scottish medal return.
The plan is for a small nation to connect with its men and women in
blue. “Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody in the team,” said
Jon Doig, Scotland’s chef de mission. My taxi driver from the airport
has tickets to watch his nephew play in the table tennis. He is nervous
and excited about what might happen to Sean Doherty, a 22-year-old
playing in his home city. He, and the rest of the city, wants something
to cheer.
Day one sees Michael Jamieson and Hannah Miley carry the
Saltire into the pool, while there are also strong hopes in the
velodrome. The talk is of a two-hour window on the first evening when
the first home medal, maybe even a gold, might arrive.
This is a
football city, and always will be, even if last night Celtic found
themselves banished to Edinburgh for the second leg of their Champions
League qualifier. But it is also a city that seems prepared to forget
its sporting roots for a week or two, and should a Scot on a bike or
Miley and Jamieson claim that piece of gold on Thursday night then that
temporary switch of allegiance will become a certainty. “We are,” said
Doig, “well placed to start day one with a roar.”
