The Common Wealth Games first started in 1930 and is held every four years. It was formerly known as the British Empire Games (1930-1950) and it involves athletes from the Common Wealth of Nations, that is countries ruled under the British rule.
Only in 1942 and 1946 did it not hold due to World War II and the games have described as the third largest multi-sport event in the world after the Olympic Games and the Asian Games.
About 18 countries have hosted the event and all the editions featured so far and only six teams have attended every Common Wealth Games; Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. Australia have been the highest achieving team at the game with twelve games to it record. No African country has ever won the Common Wealth Games.
Nigeria was the first country to boycott the Common Wealth Games in 1978 in protest over New Zealand’s sporting contacts with South Africa. Also participation at the 1986 Games was affected by a boycott by 32 African and Caribbean Nations in protest to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to condemn sporting contacts of apartheid era South Africa. The number of sporting events increased at the Kuala Lumpur Games in Malaysia from 10 to 15 sports as team sports were allowed for the first time.
The Nations to have hosted the games most number of times are Australia – five times, Canada – four times and New Zealand – three times. No African country has ever hosted the common wealth.
Nigeria competed to host the 2014 Common Wealth Games with Abuja as the host city but lost to the present host city Glasgow in Scotland as the games officially kicked off last Wednesday, July 2014.
The Glasgow 2014 Games is featuring 71 Commonwealth teams, 4,947 athletes with 17 sports and will end on August 3, 2014.
Nigeria lost the bid to host the games by 47-24 votes. Nigeria has competed at eleven Common Wealth Games from 1950.
Joshua Majekodunmi won her first medal in the High Jump in 1950 and at the last games in Delhi the country won 11 gold medals 8 silver and 14 horizon medals. The country’s greatest strong holds has been in athletics, weightlifting, wrestling, boxing and table tennis.
1999 edition hosted by the city of Victoria, Canada, remains evergreen in the memories of Nigerians. That was where Nigeria grabbed 37 medals (11 gold, 13 silver and 13 bronze) to record her best ever outing to date.
Nigeria is participating in six sports namely athletes (46 athletes), boxing (11 boxers), table tennis (10 players), shooting (16 shooters), weightlifting (15 lifters) and wrestling (14 wrestlers).
Team Nigeria will also be completely in power lifting (6 lifters) and para-athletics (9 athletes). In all, 127 athletes are in a Glasgow representing the country.
As usual, Team Nigeria’s preparations have been late and in tatters with the usual administrative bottlenecks that have characterized our past, previous and even the current edition.
The brightest prospect of Team Nigeria is Blessing Okagbare as she holds a nation’s pride once again after her excellence performance at the World Athletics Championship.
Last August at the IAAF World Champions, the University of Texas in EL Paso graduate won a silver and bronze in the Women’s long jump and 200m to equal Nigeria’s best outing at the competition.
Blessing Okagbare has had a sizzling season this year and will be featuring in the women’s 100 metre, 200 metres, 4x100 metres and the long jump as the track and field events gets on which is expected to be won of the highlights and with a personal best of 10.79 seconds in the 100m, 22.23 in the 200m, Okagbare is expected to get stiff opposition from the Jamaicans.
With her legion of foreign athletes, Team Nigeria is expected to show a strong power at the track with stiff expectations from the Jamaicans.
Expectedly, much hope lie with the female athletes as the make athletes have continued to dwindle in their performance at the global stage with the Olympics and world athletics championship being a classical example.
There are allegations that the sports ministry starved the different sports associations of funds to prosecute successful games as preparations have rocked the team’s arrival. Most of the associations failed to raise money to prepare their athletes. Sponsors were not forth coming to back the federations in their preparations except the athletics federation whose chairman, Solomon Ogba had long foreseen this present scenario and prepared his athletes with quality training, competition and foreign coaches.
Most of the athletes it is on record only went on training tour about a week to the games and most heads of the different sporting associations were yet to travel barely two days to the opening ceremony.
As for the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC), the body responsible for representing Nigeria athletes at the Glasgow Games, they were denied of funds by the sports commission to execute their statutory duties in Glasgow.
Star athletes at the Glasgow games would be Usain Bolt with six Olympic golds and eight world championship win s under his belt. He is the best sprinter of all time, but he is yet to add a Common wealth medal to his collection. He was due to feature at the Melbourne 2006 games but had to pull out with a harm string injury.
Mo Farah remains a national treasure to England as the London 2012 star has stated that he has a lot to achieve on track. He is likely to respect his gold medal victories in the 5,000m and 10,000m at Glasgow 2014.
Swimming like every major sporting event in the world would attract the highest number of medals from day one with straight fights for supremacy between Australia, New Zealand, and Canada and may be the host country.
The East Africans – Kenya, Uganda and Namibia will hope to take the centre stage in long distance races. South Africa is expected to feature at the games with a strong record in athletics appearance at the games.
How far the Nigerian boxers and table tennis players would go is left to be seen with the dearth of facilities in the country but there are greater expectations from our wrestlers whose dominance on the continent remains a milestone.
It would be another opportunity to assess Team Nigeria’s performance once again and look forward to the bigger stage where the Olympic games would hold in Rio de Janerio in 2016 but I am very certain that the star attraction would be the 100metres final and with Usain Bolt at the starling blocks at the final and no expected stiff opposition, expect a new world record at the games. History might just be knocking once again for this great athlete of all time.
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