Delhi debacle could mark beginning of end for Games Jake Niall
October 9, 2010
SWIMMERS have been ill, arousing fears they’ve been training in muddy waters. The ceiling of the weightlifting room collapsed, thankfully before competition, along with a bridge. The scoreboard at the rugby venue is falling down. Cobras have set up shop in the athletes’ village. Athletics judges threaten to strike. Nothing else works here, why should they?
But the greatest disaster of Delhi 2010 hasn’t been the litany of stuff-ups that defines these Games, as much as Ian Thorpe and Cathy Freeman defined Sydney 2000 and Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt were the poster boys of a pristine, totalitarian Beijing 2008. Delhi is chaos, Beijing was control.
Dysfunctional Delhi is the story, but, given that no one has died or been seriously injured to date, these many malfunctions aren’t the deepest cut to the prestige or viability of the Commonwealth Games. The major crisis is not that the stands are hastily erected, unsafe or dilapidated. It’s the fact that they’re empty.
Delhi is hosting the Invisible Games. With one or two notable exceptions, such as the near full house for the India-Australia hockey match on Thursday evening, the athletes are performing invisible personal bests. In Beijing, Big Brother was watching you; in Delhi, it’s no one.
No amount of spin and comical denials from Delhi 2010’s chief ‘‘organiser’’ Suresh Kalmadi - who increasingly sounds like the Iraqi information minister from Gulf War II - can mask the stunning lack of interest from the locals. Kalmadi claimed 20,000 were at the opening night of track and field. The real number, from my vantage point, was more like 8000.
At some venues, there seems to be more uniformed men with guns - the security presence is overwhelming - than spectators. Little wonder that an Indian government minister suggested that free tickets be handed out (presumably en masse) to schoolchildren.
The vacant rows of seats wouldn’t be so damaging, though, if the television audience was large. An event such as the Commonwealth Games - based, as it is, on the flimsy pretext of pan-British connections - can remain relevant, strong and viable if it provides television networks with decent ratings; it can even be a virtual event, without spectators, given sufficient eyes on flat screens.
Alas, Delhi is not a box office success for TV, either. Ten’s ratings, thus far, are well down on both Manchester 2002 and Melbourne 2006. The audience numbers are reportedly about half of Melbourne, which is bad news, not just for Ten but for the institution of the Commonwealth Games.
Like the British monarchy, it is an institution that rests on its popularity; once television loses interest and revenues dry up, there’s a chance that the Commonwealth Games will shrivel into something closer to the Pan Pacs.
It’s not only the fans who’ve ignored the Commonwealth Games. Many of the leading athletes, such as Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell, have stayed away. Some cite security concerns. More ominously, some have higher priorities. The English cycling team, for instance, is without several leading riders, who have given priority to major European events.
Delhi won’t be the last Commonwealth Games. But to borrow from one of the old British Empire’s defenders, Winston Churchill, its failure might be the beginning of the end.