Discussion: Commonwealth Games

This is exciting. Orienteering submits an Expression of Interest to be included in the 2026 Victoria Commonwealth Games
(3x sprint)

https://www.facebook.com/376523412078/posts/pfbid0...

Remember this quarter final at WOC?

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPyrtPTMtMpqA...

Fun fact. The first ever CWG (then called British Empire Games) were held in Hamilton, Ontario in 1930. Hamilton is bidding to host the 2030 CWG (100th anniversary) and is the rumoured front runner. Hamilton also hosted the first ever World Cup in orienteering held outside of Scandinavia in 1986.

https://hamilton2030.ca/

Hamilton is also the only city with both a Broadway musical and a quantum mechanical operator named after it.

Victoria is also where Canada lasted hosted the CWG (in 1994)

It would be great if orienteering made it into the Commonwealth Games with a submission from a Vic contingent after being rejected by the IOC for Olympic inclusion and finally dropped as a target by the IOF after many, many years.

When I was a kid in 1994, my family was vacationing in the PNW and we were in Victoria for a day or two. Beforehand, we had no idea that the Commonwealth Games would be going on, nor that the Queen would be there!

U.S. could have been part of the Commonwealth... guess we blew it

I assume they are still perfectly free to sign up if they want to. (It's actually no longer a requirement to be a former British colony to join - Rwanda and Mozambique are members, I guess partly because most of the countries around them are).

Switching back to orienteering, Wales would have half of a seriously good sprint relay team; who would be their other two?

Scotland and Northern Ireland.

I can see membership having been objectionable to the US under the original name (British Commonwealth), but with the name change to Commonwealth there wouldn't seem to be any real obstacle to the US joining. When Japan announced it was postponing its hosting of the 2022 World Aquatic Champs to 2023 due to Covid, there was some discussion on the swimming side that the US should join the Commonwealth in order for the US swimmers to be able to participate in a major international competition this summer (at the last minute Hungary, which had hosted them in 2017, offered to host the World Champs in 2022).

@Backstreet Boy - send a message to the Australian PM suggesting the games be renamed the Commonwealth & Aukus Games and you might get your desired outcome.
@Blair - 2025 Easter, 2026 Commonwealth Games. Is the volunteer base up for this?

Pffft, sprints are easy to organise. You only need two people - one to organise it and the other to tell you at every step of the process what you're doing wrong.

Are you confused with mapping tRicky? Or maybe there is a whole team ready to tell the mapper what he/she did wrong. Mapping opinions are like .... you know the rest of the joke.

Just use an existing map. No need to update it. It'll probably be accurate.

I would assume that for a Commonwealth Games a lot of the work would be done by (paid) event managers.

The sort of paid event managers running the World Masters Games? That saved a lot of work... ;-)

England vs Wales vs N Ireland vs Scotland in a sprint relay right now. Who wins?

Wales

Fascinating aspect of the CWG! How do you define a Welsh man or woman, there aren't separate passports are there? Is it birth?

DNA testing.

Australia state by state sprint relay who wins?

Canadian province or territory team sprint relay winner?

@Hammer, depends on if Jan Erik runs for Alberta or Ontario...

Hammer, you don't have to go province by province. Orienteering Ottawa has arguably the four best male elite orienteers in Canada right now. They win the male relay. Bring Emily home and add three of several other female participants and they take two of the top 3 places in a mixed relay.
(Ottawa won the top three places in the recent COC H 21 middle and seven of the nine H21 medals up for grabs at the COC. And Alex Bergstrom wasn't even there!)
Only question is whether the Ottawans compete for Ontario or Quebec.

Australia state by state sprint relay who wins?

SA won the last (night) sprint relay that was held in Aus but it also included Evalin B in the team. Whether she would qualify under the traditional resident rules is subject for debate but then Bridget's time would have still made for a SA win in that event.

Vic was 2nd with the two fastest males. ACT had the two fastest females.

Tas failed to field a team due to Covid so hard to say where they'd place. They have some fast runners but probably not enough to form an all round winning team.

NSW has strong juniors who'd step up and form a respectable team. I'd probably back them as having the most all around team in the present environment.

If residency rules applied I'd possibly make it onto Vic's D (or E) team but if it was state of origin, I'd likely make WA's A team.

When did Damian Konotopetz move to Ottawa?

Obviously I'm putting the Ottawa Four ahead of Damien in the Canadian depth chart. Obviously I'm greatly influenced by Mr. Konotopetz being a no-show at the COC events. A controversial call, perhaps but that's my call. I hope some day we get to see all these guys together in one race or one series of races.

World Champs: June 26-30
Western Cdn Champs: July 1-3
Canadian Champs: July 8-10
World Games: July 14-17

Kudos to Damian for racing in three of the four listed above. our national team members should not be blamed for missing the Cdn Champs when they are hosted at essentially the same time as the big international events.

23 Aug 2022 12:58# Hammer:
England vs Wales vs N Ireland vs Scotland in a sprint relay right now. Who wins?

England with Charlotte Ward, Ralph Street and Alice Leake, plus any of several other men

I think Yorkshire with Charlotte, Alice, Nathan Lawson and Jonny Crickmore! (birth or resident or both)

Damian was actually planning on attending Canadians as well but there was a registration miscommunication which is why he didn’t race them

An impressive pitch:

https://www.facebook.com/609442061/videos/10395373...

Good luck.

I don't think there will be much forest.

Who are the countries in the Commonwealth that are doing orienteering?
My counting only find 10 countries. Well, 13 if splitting UK in the England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. I think the video said 20 countries?

How are the Guernsey and Isle of Man teams looking? (Both should have good kits)

I counted fifteen flags in the video, although I confess that I am somewhat sceptical about whether Barbados or Mozambique would be able to produce CWG orienteering teams.

Barbados has had a team competing in the North American Orienteering Championships. They have made a start.

Well Australia has two athletes based on the video and they seem to be related.

Condolences for the day's news, to all those who consider themselves royal subjects.

Looks like orienteering missed out:

https://commonwealthgames.com.au/game-on-sports-lo...

Well there's a surprise to no-one but then then watching orienteering will never compare to the thrill of watching golf.

At least you can watch golf while it is happening. Can we now jettison the Olympic and similar dreams and just get out in the forest?

Coastal rowing sounds like a really incredible spectator sport. Does the planned course involve the 12 Apostles in gale force winds?

Notable US orienteer Hillary Saeger is a noted coastal rower these days.

Might have a word with the King of England.

Teqball will make it in before orienteering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teqball

Agreed. It can be an excellent spectator sport.

Hamilton, Ontario was seen as the front runner for CWG2030 marking the 100th anniversary of the first British Empire Games held in Hamilton. A lack of a commitment of funding from the Ontario government means that Hamilton is no longer the preferred Canadian host city. Canada hasn’t hosted the CWG since 1994 and the CWG have only been hosted in eastern Canada the one time in 1930.

https://globalnews.ca/news/9486183/hamilton-common...

Ford: Ball, meet ground... :-/

From an American POV, Hamilton would have been an excellent location for the games.

Would the Commonwealth exist much longer?
With Sturgeon's downfall I see trouble brewing in Scotland.

IMO, Scotland could do very well joining BRICS, leasing its naval facilities to China and providing a manufacturing and shipping hub to what is left of the UK.

You clearly know the square root of sod all about Scotland.

Anytime a political party revives the republic debate in Australia, we tend to reject it out of hand because we're just inclined to go against anything thet the politicians are pushing.

Well looks like orienteering has not missed out on anything as Dan has just announced that Victoria will no longer host the 2026 Commonwealth Games.

It was dead long before the announcement. This just confirms it.

The Guardian has a pretty good article. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jul/18/comm...

Something that doesn't get talked about there, but is definitely a factor, is that sports (including ours) are running world championships more frequently, largely because that is an asset that their own governing body controls - for example, at the time of the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane (which most Australians of my age will remember well), there was not yet a world championships in athletics (not sure if there was one in swimming, either), so if you were from a Commonwealth country, the Commonwealth Games were the biggest available competition between Olympics. That's not the case now in most sports.

Note the quotes from relevant city councils in this Guardian article.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jul/18/comm...
Whilst the headline quotes the phrase "shocked and disappointed" that seems little more than performative theatre for the press. The interviews reveal an acceptance of the decision as responsible. None of the councils wanted to front up the money they were expected to provide. I heard on the grapevine that one had already indicated it was going to pull out. Based on the press release they now expect to get the housing and infrastructure investment without all the angst and cost of the games.

I thought the MTB event was to be in Creswick, not Shepparton.

I think Shep was a late inclusion