The insidethegames.biz Magazine Autumn Edition 2023

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Uniting People

At the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony, directed by Oscar-winning film director Danny Boyle, those in the stadium and watching on television screens around the world were treated to a quick glimpse of cricket.

Players in traditional whites featured as part of a rural scene which aimed to extol the virtues of rural Britain.

Cricket is the second most popular sport in the world behind football but is only played to the highest standard in a handful of countries.

Boyle’s idyllic scene therefore provided millions of people with a rare look at a game which they had little to no understanding of.

When the sport began at London 2012, the stadium dubbed the Home of Cricket - Lord’s - was a venue but it did not welcome batters and bowlers but rather archery.

Back then, a place for cricket at the Olympic table for the first time since a single match was played in Paris in 1900 seemed a long way away.

Officials in England baulked at a possible interruption to their season while in India - home to hundreds of millions of cricket fanatics - the sport’s bosses did not want to lose autonomy to Olympic organisations.

The situation, however, has now dramatically pivoted and cricket looks set to return to the Olympic programme in time for Los Angeles 2028.

India’s massive population is a major reason why the sport is the world’s second most popular, so it is fitting that the announcement was scheduled for this month’s International

DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

Olympic Committee Session in Mumbai.

The rapid rise of the Indian Premier League, the world’s flagship T20 cricket competition, is a major reason why the sport has piqued the interest of the IOC and its President Thomas Bach.

With the IPL generating megabucks television deals, cricket will give the Olympic world the chance of bumper pay days when it negotiates its own agreements, especially in India where the IOC has not broken through as much when compared to other parts of the globe.

T20, the lightning form of cricket where matches can be completed in under three hours, is the perfect way for the sport to return to the Olympics - ending a 128-year wait and helping to spread the game to those corners of the map which have minimal knowledge of it.

In this latest edition of The insidethegames.biz Magazine, editor Dan Palmer tells the story of cricket’s Olympic reemergence and the reasons why the IOC now sees it as a tantalising prospect.

The IOC already has a powerful voice promoting cricket’s cause within its ranks. Indian Nita Ambani owns IPL giants Mumbai Indians and is married to Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.

Together the pair are powerful and wealthy advocates of the sport who will certainly have waxed lyrical to Bach. I have taken a look at Nita’s IOC membership and how she has been pivotal in cricket returning to the programme.

Any cricket tournament at the Olympics would be gleefully lapped up by the Indian public and could mean a new chapter being written in their fierce sporting rivalry with Pakistan.

Historian Philip Barker looks at previous clashes between these regional foes who love nothing more than to get one over on the other. Bach will attend the IOC Session in Mumbai having now been President for a decade.

Chief columnist David Owen assesses how the German has got on during an eventful 10-years which has seen issues such as coronavirus, Russia and North Korea come to the fore.

While cricket has a bright Olympic future, the same cannot be guaranteed for the Commonwealth Games which face a period of great uncertainty after Victoria in Australia withdrew as the host for 2026.

Reporter Patrick Burke asks what is next for the Commonwealth Games Federation with the Movement fighting for its very existence.

Weightlifting is a sport which knows what it is like to battle against adversity after it was originally left off the Los Angeles 2028 programme due to doping and corruption scandals.

Columnist Brian Oliver looks at how officials have led the sport’s recovery with light now in view at the end of the tunnel.

Mumbai’s IOC Session looks set to feature some star appeal with Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh among those to have been proposed for membership.

Dan looks at the former Bond girl and others who will have their elevation to sport’s most exclusive club rubber-stamped in the Indian city.

If you enjoy this magazine and our year-round coverage of the Olympic Movement, I would like to invite you to make a contribution to support our journalism by logging on to www.insidethegames.biz/contribute.

Every donation, however big or small, will help maintain and improve our work across the world.

We believe that Olympic news should remain in the public sphere and be free of charge to read, and we hope that it will.

Thank you and enjoy the magazine.

Duncan Mackay Editor

OWZTHAT!

Cricket looks set to end a 128-year wait in Los Angeles and return to the Olympic fold. Dan Palmer looks at the lengthy road back and the sport’s new lucrative appeal.

Afew years ago, when sitting in the hotel lobby on an overseas trip with insidethegames, I began chatting with an American journalist.

When realising I was from England, he swiftly changed the subject to cricket - the sport which has become synonymous with my homeland but is largely a curiosity for many in the United States.

“It’s like baseball with a stick,” the journalist opined, before I attempted to explain some of the more peculiar rules and terms.

On another occasion, with a Frenchman, I was asked about an England tour to New Zealand which had included three five-day Test matches.

All three of these games had ended in draws, meaning that after 15 scheduled days of cricket the score between the two countries was 0-0.

This had baffled my companion. How, he asked, after so much play could there be no winner?

Cricket is something of a paradox as despite regularly being listed as the second most popular sport in the world after football, with billions of fans, it is not something played at the highest level by the overwhelming majority of the world’s countries.

With a history that traces back to medieval England, the sport is now dominated by a handful of Commonwealth superpowers, although this still allows cricket to stretch to all four corners of the globe.

England, India and Australia are known as the big three of the sport and boast the lion’s share of the game’s financial clout.

They are joined at the top table by the likes of New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and the West Indies - with the latter a combined team of Caribbean nations.

Only 12 teams are eligible to play Test cricket, the longest form of the game which is often seen as the most prestigious, but many more play the shorter one-day international and T20 formats across men’s and women’s events.

A big challenge for cricket, then, is diluting the current power base to ensure that other countries not only become interested in the sport but competitive when playing it.

Cricket is due to return to the Olympic programme in Los Angeles

Photo: Getty Images

DANIEL PALMER MAGAZINE EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

That dream looks set to take a huge leap forward with the sport’s elevation to the Olympic programme in time for the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games.

This decision, almost certain to be rubber-stamped at this month’s International Olympic Committee Session in Mumbai, will bring the bat and ball game to the attention of many more people and onto television screens a long way outside of the Commonwealth.

Maybe, just maybe, my American and French friends of the past, and many more like them, will no longer be as puzzled.

The location of the IOC Session where cricket will join the Los Angeles programme could, of course, not be much better.

India, and its gargantuan population of nearly 1.5 billion people, is cricket mad and Mumbai is a city which quite simply lives and breathes the sport.

At the same time as the IOC Session, India will be hosting the 2023 Cricket World Cup and a frenzied host nation will be bidding to reclaim the men’s 50-over title which they last won in 2011.

On October 14, a day before the opening of the Session, India are due to host fierce rivals Pakistan at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Mumbai is around 350 miles from the game but who would bet against IOC President Thomas Bach making an appearance, potentially alongside Modi, the Indian Prime Minister who gives the gargantuan stadium its name?

Bach loves a photoshoot with a world leader and he will be keen that the news of cricket’s Olympic future is told with as much fanfare and razzamatazz as possible.

The German’s enthusiasm for the sport will no doubt have been fuelled by the success of the Indian Premier League, a franchise competition which launched in 2008 and attracts the world’s best players to the subcontinent.

An auction system sees clubs bid huge sums to attract top stars into their squads, with the best performers hero worshiped by fans.

This year, the 2023 edition of the men’s IPL is said to have attracted more than half a billion television viewers, a massive amount which would no doubt have left Bach and others in Lausanne’s corridors of power licking their lips.

The media rights for the IPL between 2023 and 2027 have already been sold for $6.4 billion to Viacom18 and Star Sports, which means that every IPL match alone is valued at $13.4 million.

Bach and the IOC will hope to tap into this goldmine and grab a piece of the pie, with cricket’s inclusion in the Olympics certain to influence discussions on future television deals, particularly in India and the subcontinent but elsewhere as well.

Viacom18, a media giant based in Mumbai, penned a deal in December which will see the company broadcast the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

But an agreement for Los Angeles 2028, where cricket is due to make its debut, is yet to be decided and you can almost see the dollar signs in Bach’s eyes.

One estimate has suggested that the India deal for Paris 2024, worth around $20 million, could balloon to $200 million in time for Los Angeles.

Michael Payne, the IOC’s former marketing and broadcast rights director, said that current Olympic deals in India would be tiny when compared to what broadcasters are paying for the IPL.

He added that the Olympic Movement has under-performed in India and the subcontinent when compared to the rest of the world, with cricket providing the perfect opportunity to put that right.

“Putting cricket on the programme would be a game-changer,” he told The Times

“You look at what the IOC currently gets for TV rights in India and what the IPL generates and, although it is not a direct

comparison, there is no question that having cricket as an Olympic sport would transform the media rights market there.”

Payne said that cricket’s Olympic inclusion was a “now or never” moment for the IOC and there are favourable host cities on the horizon.

After Los Angeles, the 2032 Olympics will be in Brisbane in Australia which has already announced plans to redevelop The Gabba cricket ground so it can serve as the focal venue of the Games.

The 2036 Games have yet to be allocated but India itself could be in the frame.

In September, the country’s chances were talked up by Bach and if India was to host the flagship event for the first time, any cricket tournament would unquestionably be the highlight for the local population.

"India is the most populous nation on this planet,” said Bach.

"India, with its flourishing sports movement, is going beyond the more traditional sports and embracing more and more Olympic sports.

"It's a really welcome initiative by India.

"There is a strong case [for hosting].

"India can play a much more important role in the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Movement has growth potential with India.

"It is of course very welcome."

Speculation about a possible Indian Games suggests that it would centre on

Cricket's inclusion will boost interest in the Olympics in India Photo: Getty Images

Ahmedabad, with the Narendra Modi Stadium having room for a mammoth 134,000 fans.

If Modi and Bach are to meet on the sidelines of the IOC Session, it seems likely that 2036 would be towards the top end of their discussions.

The IOC will also hope that cricket will spark interest in other Olympic sports in countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Despite its huge population, India has won just 10 gold medals in its Olympic history, with appearances dating back to 1900 under British imperial rule.

The country is 56th on the all-time Summer Olympic medal table, behind much smaller nations such as Estonia and Slovakia.

Bangladesh, meanwhile, another cricket obsessed nation, is home to more than 170 million people but has never won an Olympic medal of any colour.

Pakistan, with a population of a mere 240 million, has only won three golds. The hope will be that cricket’s inclusion will bring other sports to young eyes and ears which could, eventually, lead to better performances across the spectrum and the gap to the Olympic superpowers closing.

Bach, who has declared himself as a fan of cricket and was photographed playing the sport in Fiji last year, is perhaps a new convert to the game as his country Germany has no heritage in the sport.

But others within the IOC membership will be well up to speed on the sport’s charms, including Indian Nita Ambani, the owner of IPL side Mumbai Indians.

Mukesh Ambani, Nita’s husband, is the richest man in Asia and chairman of conglomerate Reliance Industries, an organisation with irons in many fires.

The couple serve as a powerful and influential duo in support of cricket’s ambitions, and Reliance is a potential

lucrative partner for the sporting world having already joined forces with the Indian Olympic Association, a move which will see the country open a hospitality house for the first time at Paris 2024.

It would be easy to think that cricket will make its Olympic debut in Los Angeles, but the sport has appeared before, way back in 1900 in Paris.

Britain, France, The Netherlands and Belgium were due to take part but the latter two countries withdrew after bids to co-host the Games failed to come to fruition.

This meant the two-day game between Britain and France at the Vélodrome de Vincennes, normally a cycling venue, automatically became the final.

Despite matches usually featuring 11 players on each side, the Olympic affair began with teams of 12.

A low-scoring contest saw Britain win by 158 runs with just five minutes left on day two, meaning a draw was narrowly avoided.

France, a country which is not a force in cricket these days, scored just 104 across the entire match while Britain’s team was made up completely of Devon and Somerset Wanderers players.

Only two of the British team had played first-class cricket before, including bowler Montagu Toller who achieved preposterous figures of 7-9 in the second French innings as the hosts were skittled for a paltry 26.

Toller’s achievement was so good that it is unimaginable in the game today, while

Britain's captain Charles Beachcroft and Alfred Bowerman were the only two batters to get past 50.

Britain’s winners were interestingly awarded silver medals alongside models of the Eiffel Tower which were handed to both sides.

The medals were later converted to gold with the clash only declared an official Olympic event in 1912.

It remains as the only cricket match played at the Olympics and a contest that cannot be completed on the same day will surely never grace sport’s grandest stage again.

The possibility of cricket returning to the Olympic programme after a wait of 128 years has been made possible by the invention of T20, a 20 over game which can normally be wrapped up in a television friendly two and a half hours.

Fans quickly took to the concept of T20 when it was first introduced in England in 2003. While a Test match traditionally trundles along at a slow place in a tactical battle comparable to a game of chess, T20’s lightning format lends itself to big hitting and attacking cricket which excites not only spectators in the crowd but television companies and viewers as well.

A positive result is also guaranteed as a “super over” will be deployed if teams are level, taking the possibility of the draw out of the equation.

In 2004, the first T20 match held at Lord’s, the sport’s spiritual home which staged archery at London 2012, attracted a crowd of 27,509.

Cricket is demonstrated during the Opening Ceremony of London 2012 Photo: Getty Images

The IOC will eye lucrative TV deals after adding cricket to the programme Photo: Getty Images

This was the highest attendance for any county game at the ground, other than a one-day final, since 1953.

T20 quickly spread around the world with other countries developing their own competitions, and World Cups for both men and women are now regular fixtures in the calendar. Other leagues that operate alongside the all-conquering IPL include Australia’s Big Bash, England’s T20 Blast and the Pakistan Super League.

The worldwide spread of T20 has created new opportunities for players who can now pack their bat into an aeroplane hold and perform in far flung places across the globe.

This is now the age of the franchise cricketer - T20 specialists who excel at rapid batting or economical bowling and hop from country to country to earn their keep.

Such has been the success of the quick format, some have tried to shorten T20 even further in the belief that it will encourage more fans to the sport.

In England, a 100-ball tournament called The Hundred has been played to mixed reviews, while a T10 league with matches of just 10 overs is held in Abu Dhabi.

DANIEL PALMER MAGAZINE EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

T20, however, remains as the likely Olympic format and it has already found a home at multi-sport events including the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games.

At the Commonwealth Games, a women’s tournament debuted the format in Birmingham last year, with the event passing off successfully and winning many admirers including the IOC. Both men and women will feature in Los Angeles but the road to Olympic recognition has been a long one due to previous resistance.

“The reason it has taken so long is the International Cricket Council did not really understand what it could do for cricket,” said Payne.

In 2011, former IOC President Jacques Rogge said he would welcome an application from cricket for a place on the sports programme.

But the England and Wales Cricket Board were concerned about the loss of two weeks in its season, with former chairman Giles Clarke describing the Olympics as a “tournament too far” in a 2015 documentary.

“The Olympics takes place during the English season,” Clarke said.

“It’s impossible for us to set aside time for it. It would have an enormous economic

impact on the game in this country.

“It’s a complete non-starter. We’re not going to be playing Olympic cricket for men.”

One report said that the ECB worried about losing a four-match Test series and revenues of up to $160 million.

The powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India also had objections, largely due to fears that it would lose its autonomy and fall under the umbrella of Olympic authorities if the sport was given a place.

These fears appear to have subsided, however, and even the US - an unlikely destination for cricket’s Olympic return perhaps - is taking steps to embrace the game.

Massive investment was pumped into the country’s new franchise competition - Major League Cricket - which held its first season in July.

Mega-rich owners of IPL clubs have a stake in four teams, including Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan who owns LA Knight Riders in the Olympic host city.

Cricket in Los Angeles is also set to benefit from plans to develop a venue for the team in Great Park in Irvine.

A 5,000 to 7,000 seat stadium is being

Cricket remains an emerging sport in the United States but is making positive strides forward Photo: Getty Images

planned with hopes to have it operational before the 2026 season.

The ICC has already spoken to Khan’s KKR Group, which also owns Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, to hear more about the plans.

A big boost for Olympic cricket will be that the world’s best players should be available to appear in Los Angeles with minimum fuss.

This is an issue that has hindered baseball - a team sport which on the surface appears much more suited to an American Olympic Games with the mouthwatering prospect of matches at LA’s iconic Dodger Stadium. However, the reluctance of Major League Baseball to release top players for the Games means fans know what they are watching does not represent the pinnacle of the sport and the product is watered down.

It appears that both baseball and softball will miss out on Los Angeles inclusion, a big

DANIEL PALMER MAGAZINE EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

Boom Time For Flag

blow for sports which returned to the Olympic programme at Tokyo 2020 after previously being axed following Beijing 2008.

With pressure on athlete numbers, there seems like there will be no room for the sports with flag football, another discipline linked to the US, surprisingly favoured for inclusion instead.

In 1988, the addition of tennis to the programme boosted Olympic interest in China, while the success of the American basketball “Dream Team” at Barcelona 1992 sparked worldwide enthusiasm for the NBA.

Both of these sports face a common question which will also apply to cricket, however, namely would an Olympic gold medal become the biggest prize on offer?

Cricketers certainly seem keen and whereas it is impossible to see the Olympic football title surpassing the FIFA World Cup in terms of prestige, an Olympic cricket gold being strived for more than the T20 World Cup does seem feasible.

Indian great Sachin Tendulkar, one of the best batsmen the sport has ever seen, met with Bach at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

"Being a cricketer, I would want that to happen and I am looking forward to it, without any doubt,” he said.

Shane Warne, the sublime Australian spin bowler, who tragically died last year, said T20 would be the perfect format for the Olympics.

“We might be able to inspire some young Americans to pick up a cricket bat instead of a baseball bat,” he said.

“That’s an exciting thought.”

Cricket’s acceptance to the Olympic programme may be puzzling to countries which don’t play the sport, and the expected confirmation of flag football will also raise a few eyebrows, particularly outside of the United States. Nine sports were announced as being in the frame to be added to the Los Angeles 2028 programme - baseball/softball, breaking, cricket, flag football, karate, kickboxing, lacrosse, motorsport and squash.

Flag football looks set to join cricket in California while breaking, already confirmed for the Paris 2024 programme, will keep its spot.

American football is the most popular sport in the US and flag football is a non-contact version. Tackling is not allowed with attacks stopped by pulling an opponent’s flag. Other principles remain the same as American football, such as playing on offence or defence and having four downs to move the ball towards a certain point on the field, with the ultimate goal of a touchdown.

It remains to be seen if any stars of the National Football League will fancy taking up flag football in order to compete at the Olympics, but NFL backing and money will certainly interest Games bosses.

Flag is seen as key to female players with the women’s game lagging behind the men’s in terms of development.

Many thought baseball/ softball would be the famous American sports in LA, but it seems like it will be flag’s chance to shine - a great opportunity to grow the game away from US shores.

Dan Palmer

The Indian Premier League has turned into a goliath event which generates huge income Photo: Getty Images

Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar backed cricket's inclusion

Photo: Getty Images

T WO TRIB E S

Team events have led the way for India and Pakistan on the world stage, with the two countries locked in one of international sport’s fiercest rivalries.

There has been little love lost between the two neighbours since the partition of British India in 1947, which redrew the map and brought Pakistan into existence.

India, largely a Hindu country, and Islamic nation Pakistan are both nuclear powers and have since fought several wars.

They have notably clashed over the Kashmir region and the bad blood in the political arena often spills over into sport’s field of play.

Eight of India's ten Olympic gold medals have come in hockey, and all three of Pakistan's have arrived in the same sport.

Yet the rivalry between the two nations is even more intense when they meet in cricket, the favourite sport of each country.

Whenever they meet, and whatever the format, there is a frenzied rush for tickets.

Before independence and the divide of the two nations, the players competed alongside one another as "All India".

Independence from British colonial rule was followed by bitter civil strife in which many died.

In 1948, at a meeting of what is now known as the International Cricket Council, India were granted provisional recognition to continue playing Test matches.

Leading Indian sports officials Pankaj Gupta and Anthony de Mello suggested that Pakistan should also be admitted to the international fold.

A five Test series between the two nations was finally arranged to take place in 1952.

Pakistan were led by Abdul Hafeez Kardar, who had played for the All India team which toured England in 1946.

He was one of only three players from that generation to play for both teams.

Amir Elahi, who made an appearance for India in 1947, was also selected in the Pakistan squad of 16 for the historic tour.

"I am fully satisfied with the selection, I think I can say with some luck the side will perform creditably well," Kardar said.

Whenever India and Pakistan meet in sport, you know it’s going to be electric. Philip Barker tells the story of two great foes.

India and Pakistan both have proud pedigree in hockey

Photo: Getty Images

PHILIP BARKER HISTORIAN, INSIDETHEGAMES

Among the players in India's team was Gul Mohammed, who ended his Test career playing for Pakistan.

India won the first Test by an innings and 70 runs in Delhi and eventually took the series 2-1, with the final two matches drawn.

This result set a trend as the next two series were also stalemates. But, after the 0-0 series in 1961, there was a long gap before the next in 1978.

Test meetings have been sporadic and characterised by caution, and the two countries have not met in the sport’s longest format since December 2007.

It has been left to limited overs cricket to really electrify the rivalry.

India was initially slow to adjust to one-day internationals but, when the first ODI between the two sides took place in 1978 in Quetta, they beat their hosts by four runs.

All-rounder Mohinder Amarnath reached his half century and took two wickets in a low scoring match which was a portent of things to come, as he proved a key player when India won the World Cup in 1983.

Curiously, India did not meet Pakistan head-to-head in a global competition again until the 1985 World Championship of Cricket, a one-off event in Melbourne to commemorate the 150th anniversary of European settlers in Victoria.

India won and fans then had to wait until 1992 for their first official World Cup meeting.

On that occasion in Sydney an unbeaten 54 from Sachin Tendulkar saw India to victory by 43 runs, but it was Pakistan, famously inspired by captain and future Prime Minister Imran Khan, who went on to lift the trophy after striking a rich vein of form in the latter stages.

Since then, there has usually been at least one meeting between the countries in major tournaments.

In 2011, Tendulkar's 85 set the stage for the sweetest of all Indian victories in the semi-final as a prelude to winning the World Cup on home soil, a feat never achieved before.

So often, it has been India who have held sway.

This explained why there was such joy when Pakistan convincingly triumphed in the 2017 Champions Trophy final.

Pakistan's women were unable to repeat the trick at the 2017 World Cup, although the encounter attracted a large and exuberant crowd.

India's men restored their pattern of success at the 2019 World Cup in Manchester. It was at the same ground where India had seen off the fearsome pace of Shoaib Akhtar, also known as the "Rawalpindi Express", in 1999.

If cricket remains the greatest rivalry, hockey certainly runs it close. India's illustrious tradition in the sport began before the partition and they won every Olympic gold from 1928 to 1956.

Pakistan returned from their Olympic debut in 1948 with bronze, helped by Ali Dara, a gold medallist from 1936 with the All India team.

Then, at last in 1956, the two nations met in the Olympic arena for the first time - and it just happened to be the final.

India won 1-0 to win gold once more, but the wind of change blew in at the 1958 Asian Games in Tokyo.

The two sides drew 0-0 in a tournament run on a league basis. It was sufficient to give Pakistan the gold medal on goal difference, but it also set the scene for the Rome 1960 Olympics.

This time Pakistan won by the only goal as they clinched gold for the first time. They followed this up with another Asian Games title in 1962 in Jakarta.

Although India bounced back with victory at both the Tokyo 1964 Olympics and the 1966 Asian Games, Pakistan's golden period was in progress.

The countries were drawn in separate groups at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, but Pakistan won gold.

Then, in 1971, the rivals came together in the semi-finals of the inaugural World Cup in Barcelona.

Pakistan won 2-1 and went on to lift the trophy. In 1975, India came from behind to beat their great rivals 2-1 in the World Cup final in Kuala Lumpur. Pakistan reclaimed the title in 1978

and won again in 1982, this time on Indian soil although the two sides did not meet.

Pakistan won Olympic gold in 1984 in Los Angeles, but that is currently their last title to date.

They have not won the men's World Cup since 1994, but their four victories is still the record for the tournament. Neither nation has lifted the trophy in the women's competition. In football, the countries met for the first time at the 1952 Colombo Cup where they drew 0-0 and were declared as joint winners of the tournament.

An intriguing India-Pakistan rivalry is also developing in javelin, with Indian Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra winning the world title in Budapest in August in front of Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem, who won silver. Both countries excel in wrestling, with India winning two finals against Pakistan opponents at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

It is a rivalry which shows no signs of ever fizzling out.

Cricket matches between India and Pakistan always result in an electric atmoshphere Photo: Getty Images

Javelin throwers Neeraj Chopra, left, and Arshad Nadeem finished first and second at this year's World Championships Photo: Getty Images

T.

THE TEN YEAR REPORT CARD

Ten years ago, I was in the Buenos Aires Hilton as Thomas Bach made his first public utterance as Olympic boss - a less than Presidential but very human “Ouffff!”

The monosyllable was more expressive than you might imagine. It seemed to convey a kaleidoscope of emotions: relief that the election - which had delivered a secondround victory for Bach, the red-hot favourite - was behind him; satisfaction at an ambition fulfilled; a dawning realisation that life would be different now; and perhaps just a dash of trepidation at the size of the job.

I very much doubt, however, if even in his wildest pre-electoral dreams the ninth International Olympic Committee President imagined all the slings and arrows that outrageous fortune was set to fling at him over his first decade in charge of this unwieldy, globe-spanning sports empire.

had been negotiated. But you did not have to be Nostradamus to comprehend that 50 per cent growth was not going to be sustainable in this increasingly tetchy new climate.

The gathering storm clouds over Rio and its 2016 Olympic and Paralympic project were also plainly apparent. And I suppose if you are going to stage a Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, prudence ought to dictate the formulation of some sort of back-up plan lest tensions with the North begin to spiral.

But a raging global pandemic? Even if the

scientific advisers were aware that eventually humanity’s recent luck on this score was likely to run out, Bach would have had little reason to anticipate that the contagion would strike

Putin’s Russia would be a cause of almost constant problems for the Movement during his stint at the helm. Indeed, the early signs - up to and including the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics a few months after Bach’s election, which were initially felt to have passed off splendidly - might have led us, and him, to expect the opposite.

By comparison, Bach’s predecessor Jacques Rogge - whose approach to the Presidency, admittedly, could not have been more different - had things rather easy.

Thomas Bach has now been at the helm of the International Olympic Committee for more than a decade.

DAVID OWEN CHIEF COLUMNIST, INSIDETHEGAMES

All of which is a preliminary to saying that even if, like me, you think that the Olympic Movement is in a worse place today than it was on that bright confident morning 10 years ago in the Argentine capital, it does not necessarily follow that Bach has been doing a poor job.

Raising money to keep the Olympic ecosystem - including some of the minor sports on the programme - going is these days one of the Games’ key functions, and here Bach has performed well.

His early sealing of a $7.65 billion three-cycle broadcasting deal with NBCUniversal, locking the US network into screening the Games until 2032, has come to look more and more astute with the passage of time, as the traditional media rights model that enriched sport has come to look ever more precarious.

More than that, he somehow managed to plot a path through the COVID-19 emergency without incurring either a significant hit to IOC revenues or a damagingly substantial escalation of IOC costs.

While handouts to some of the bodies that depend on the IOC have scarcely risen since that buoyant 2010-2012 quadrennium, things could have been so much worse. Bach and his team deserve credit for staving off what might have been a real disaster for the wider movement.

In management terms, the chief hallmark of Bach’s decade has been the centralisation of power. On this I have very mixed feelings.

The IOC did need to become nimbler in an ever faster-paced world. This has been achieved by shifting more onus onto professional, mainly Lausanne-based, officials - the IOC’s civil service - at the expense of members, who are spread around the world (obviously), meet only occasionally and mainly have busy portfolio careers.

In spite of an initial display of collegiality, this centralised and often secretive approach has been evident since the Bach regime’s early days.

The path towards that landmark NBCUniversal deal began at a New York dinner, attended on the IOC side by just Bach and two top officials. “We kept it among the three of us,” the German subsequently confided.

But efficient execution in an organisation whose aspirations are as universal as the IOC’s needs to be accompanied by a consensual and understanding approach when seeking to address the many delicate and potentially divisive matters that will arise.

Too often, I think, Bach’s personal management style has appeared

disappointingly intolerant of criticism and sincerely held differences of opinion.

Under his leadership, I would say that the IOC’s treatment of individuals such as former International Paralympic Committee President Sir Philip Craven, former World Anti-Doping Agency chief Sir Craig Reedie and former IOC doyen, the massively well-respected Richard Pound, has sometimes seemed unappealingly petty.

As Pound himself told me: “I paid the price for publicly expressed opposition to the IOC’s decisions, through my removal as chairman of Olympic Broadcasting Services, as director of Olympic Channel Services and from the Legal Affairs Commission.”

There is a problem here. For one thing, once it is known that individuals of even Pound’s stature might pay a price for speaking out, it becomes hard not to take any reference to the “unity of the Olympic Movement” with a pinch of salt.

For another, in this devilishly complicated world, no one individual is going to be right 100 per cent of the time. On those occasions when a prominent leader is about to err, he - and the organisation he leads - needs someone with a firm grasp of the situation to talk straight to him. If the internal culture discourages this, you increase the risk of a damaging blooper.

Changing the Olympic motto to “Faster, higher, stronger – together” was, I believe, one such blooper, though I suppose it is not especially damaging and easily rectifiable.

Another important mistake, in my view, was to reform the selection process for Olympic host cities.

The IOC has two chief products: one - the Winter Olympics - is struggling, with global warming now coming, increasingly insistently, to add to its list of problems; the other - the Summer Olympics - remains broadly in reasonable health.

It could certainly be argued that the time has come to rotate the Winter Games around a small number of hosts with the required infrastructure, including the specialised sports facilities.

The Summer Games selection process - admirably transparent and suitably demanding, as it was, for those involvedshould have been left well alone.

One of the old system’s abiding virtues, from the Movement’s standpoint, was that it kept the Olympics firmly in the public eye

Thomas Bach was elected as International Olympic Committee President a decade ago Photo: Getty Images

Richard Pound was frozen out after getting on the wrong side of Thomas Bach Photo: Getty Images

- not always in a good way, admittedlyduring the long intervals between Games.

With football an ever more dominant rival for the week-in, week-out attention of sports fans all over the world, this is an increasingly critical issue, and one Bach’s IOC has yet to find a convincing alternative way of addressing.

DAVID OWEN CHIEF COLUMNIST, INSIDETHEGAMES

Of course, under the old method, while their choices had generally been reasonable if sometimes surprising, IOC members had demonstrated a repeated reluctance to select another US city to follow in the footsteps of Atlanta, which hosted the 1996 Summer Games.

With US corporations contributing so heavily to the health of IOC finances, this was becoming a problem for the leadership

- one rectified by the simultaneous choice of hosts for the 2024 and 2028 Games.

With no unblemished Olympics or Winter Olympics yet staged under Bach’s Presidency, the 2024 Games in Paris have become fundamental to the legacy the German will leave behind. This means he simply has to get Russia right.

He has a point when, like the clever lawyer he is, he draws attention to “the other 70 wars and armed conflicts in the world”. After all, if we are to exclude Russian athletes from the Olympic Games, even in neutral guise, we really ought to be able to explain why athletes bearing the passports of the aggressors in at least some of these other conflicts are not similarly excluded.

However, those who argue, like Bach, that the Olympic Movement’s mission is to “unite the world in a peaceful competition” and those who point out, as Bach has done, that the Olympic Charter does not allow “a total isolation of people with a specific passport” face an inconvenient truth. This is that the staunchest support for Ukraine tends to lie in countries whose corporations are the source of a high proportion of IOC revenues.

A Paris 2024 with athletes who carry Russian or Belarusian passports, but with no Ukrainians, would be terrible for the Olympic brand in the rich, industrialised countries of Europe and North America. By contrast, a Paris

2024 without Russians would probably rub along just fine, much as the second Los Angeles Olympics managed to do four decades earlier.

If Paris does deliver a Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games to remember, Bach may have just enough time before his scheduled departure in 2025 to negotiate a parting gift that the Movement would have real cause to be thankful for: a new US media rights deal stretching well beyond 2032.

The long-term financial security that such a deal might bring would be a real boon in these increasingly turbulent times and spare his successor the need to focus on the matter as an early priority.

It would also strengthen his hand should he decide to try and extend his Presidency beyond the 12-year maximum stipulated by the Olympic Charter.

The success or failure of Paris 2024 will make or break Thomas Bach's legacy Photo: Getty Images

The relationship between Thomas Bach and Vladimir Putin has been a key part of the German's IOC Presidency Photo: Getty Images

Thomas Bach masterminded a change to the process of selecting Olympic hosts which has killed off bidding races Photo: Getty Images

Whether it is partying with Bollywood stars, attending a White House reception arranged by Joe Biden or celebrating with players from one of the cricket teams she owns, Nita Ambani is never very far from the headlines in India.

The International Olympic Committee member is one half of India’s most powerful couple whose wealth is measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Together with her husband, businessman Mukesh Ambani, the family is said to be worth over $90 billion, ranking them the wealthiest in Asia and among the richest in the world.

The couple’s property portfolio includes Antilia, a private residence in Mumbai valued at $2 billion and named after an island from 15th century Spanish tales of the Atlantic Ocean. On the top six floors is the Ambanis’ private residence.

The 27-storey structure is 173 metres tall, over 37,000 square metres in size and designed to withstand a magnitude eight earthquake. The structure's design incorporates the lotus plant and the sun and includes amenities such as a 168-car garage, a ballroom, nine high speed elevators, a 50-seat theatre, terrace gardens, swimming pool, spa, health centre, a temple and a snow room that spits out snowflakes from the walls.

Other properties they own include Stoke Park, an iconic hotel in the United Kingdom which has been the location for James Bond movies, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City and an $80 million house on the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai.

The Ambanis’ company Reliance Industries also owns the Jio World Centre at the Bandra Kurla Complex, the venue for this year’s IOC Session in Mumbai - surely the first time an IOC member has owned the building hosting

the Olympics’ annual gathering?

The 59-year-old may now enjoy wealth and privilege beyond almost anyone’s imagination, but it was not always like this.

Ambani was born into a middle-class Gujarati family in Mumbai and after graduating in commerce, became a professional Bharatnatyam dancer, the oldest classical dance tradition in India and which was originally performed by women in Hindu temples. She was working as a schoolteacher when she met her future husband.

“I grew up in a small suburb of Mumbai called Santacruz, in what we call a ‘joint family’ in India, with all my aunts and uncles, surrounded by cousins; 11 girls and one boy,” Ambani said. “We were raised to believe that we could achieve anything we wanted - no goal was too big, no dream impossible. I loved my large family, and I was shaped by the strong value system that they ingrained in all of us.”

Mukesh Ambani was born and raised briefly in Yemen before his family moved to India, where he got a degree in chemical engineering. He studied for a short period at Stanford University before dropping out to help his father develop Reliance, which at the time was still a small but fast-growing enterprise.

Reliance Industries is now India's most valuable company by market value, a leader in energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media and textiles.

The company is a major sponsor of sport in India and owns the cricket team Mumbai Indians, five-time winners of the Indian Premier League and whose players have included the country’s biggest sports icon Sachin Tendulkar.

Nita Ambani brings massive wealth to the International Olympic Committee membership and even owns the building where the IOC Session will be held. Duncan Mackay profiles a woman with growing sporting influence.

Mumbai Indians have won the IPL title on five occasions Photo: Getty Images

Nita Ambani brings a huge fortune to the IOC membership

Photo: Getty Images

It was Reliance’s involvement in cricket that led to Ambani becoming so deeply involved in sport.

“I was 44 when sport came into my life and gave me a whole new perspective and world view,” she said.

“We owned the Mumbai Indians team in the Indian Premier League, and for two years they had been at the bottom of the table. In season two, I flew to South Africa to motivate and be with the team. That’s how it all started in 2009 - from those first team meetings, learning nitty-gritties of the game, living and breathing cricket every single moment.”

Ambani was invited to join the IOC in 2016 and it is surely no coincidence that since becoming part of the exclusive club, a momentum has gathered behind cricket returning to the Olympics for the first time since Paris in 1900 - an objective that seems close to being achieved with expectations that the sport’s inclusion on the Los Angeles 2028 programme will be announced at the IOC Session in Mumbai.

The United States is seen as a key market for cricket to crack and the Ambanis are

DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

major investors of the sport there. It was their team, MI New York, which lifted the T20 Major League Cricket title in July. They beat the Seattle Orcas by seven wickets in the final at the Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas.

Nita Ambani was there and joined in the celebrations on the pitch afterwards with her winning players.

"Just look at the atmosphere here,” she said on the pitch. “It looks like a festival of cricket. I think MLC is a momentous step in the development of cricket in this region. Sport can be a bedrock of society and especially in the US it's a big part of the culture."

Among those who are self-confessed fans of Nita Ambani is Indian’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has praised her for “showcasing the unique Indian phenomenon of staying rooted to one’s roots while also being committed to progress”.

At the Bandra Kurla Complex, site of the Jio World Centre, there is also the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, a state-ofthe-art venue featuring exhibition rooms, three theatres with ceilings decorated with Swarovski crystals, and various art

installations showcasing leading Indian and international artists.

When it opened earlier this year, it was claimed it was part of Ambani’s determination to present the best of India to the world.

The IOC should clearly be prepared to be dazzled when they arrive in Mumbai.

Mukesh and Nita Ambani are a high-profile power couple in India Photo: Getty Images

Nita Ambani in IOC mode at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics

Photo: Getty Images

City of Budapest

World Taekwondo

World Karate Federation

Ju-Jitsu International Federation

International Boxing Association

International SAMBO Federation

Commonwealth Games Federation

International Weightlifting Federation

International School Sports Federation

Global Association of Mixed Martial Arts

Sport Event Denmark

Olympic Council of Asia

Bahrain Olympic Committee

Badminton World Federation

International Judo Federation

European Olympic Committees

International Taekwon-do Federation

World Baseball Softball Confederation

International University Sports Federation

International Federation of American Football Ministry of Youth and Sports, Azerbaijan Republic

DANIEL PALMER MAGAZINE EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

THE BOND GIRL AT THE IOC

When the list of eight new proposed International Olympic Committee members was revealed in September, there was one name which jumped off the page. With the greatest of respect to Tunisian Olympic Committee President Mehrez Boussayene, it was not him, but rather former Bond girl and Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh.

Yeoh, from Malaysia, played Chinese spy Wai Lin in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and the 61-year-old’s parachuting into sport’s most exclusive club could leave some members feeling both shaken and stirred.

She boasts a long list of film credits and in March became the first Asian woman to win the Oscar for best actress.

This was for her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once, which scooped best picture and has a title which perhaps perfectly sums up the workload and international travel experienced by those in the higher echelons of global sport.

In 1983, Yeoh was named Miss Malaysia and she is a former national junior squash champion.

Whether she can breathe new life into the racket sport’s long and unsuccessful battle for an Olympic place is anyone’s guess, but she will certainly inject some star appeal into a membership which many have complained is too old and doddery, as well as being silent and unwilling to challenge the wishes of IOC President Thomas Bach.

Another sporting link for Yeoh is her marriage to Frenchman Jean Todt, the President of the International Automobile Federation from 2009 to 2021.

All eight of the suggested new members will be waved through without fuss or fanfare at the IOC Session in Mumbai this month.

International Table Tennis Federation and International Skating Union Presidents Petra Sörling and Kim Jae-youl are both on the list.

Sweden’s Sörling is the first female head of the ITTF while South Korea’s Kim is the brother-in-law of tech giant and IOC sponsor Samsung’s de facto leader Lee Jae-yong.

Two Olympic medallists, Yael Arad of Israel and Cecilia Roxana Tait Villacorta of Peru, will also join the club.

Judoka Arad became the first Israeli to win an Olympic medal when she captured under-61 kilograms silver at Barcelona 1992, and now leads her country’s NOC.

Tait, who moved into politics, won silver as part of Peru’s volleyball team in Seoul in 1988.

Elsewhere, Balázs Fürjes of Hungary was the co-chairman of this year’s World Athletics Championships in Budapest. The event was viewed as a launchpad to the city bidding once again for the Olympics and the admission of Fürjes, Hungary’s former secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office, will be another string to the bow for those dreams.

Michael Mronz will join Bach as a German IOC member. He promotes the BMW Open tennis tournament in Munich and headed up the 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen.

Boussayene was elected for a third term in charge of the Tunisian NOC in 2021.

Eight new IOC members are due to be coronated. Dan Palmer reports.

CRISIS POINT

The Commonwealth Games faces a battle for its future after high-profile hosting withdrawals. Patrick Burke asks where the Movement goes from here.

It was a day which started with Commonwealth Games organisers hoping to put their issues in securing a host for future editions to one side.

Within hours, Alberta in Canada had withdrawn its bid for 2030 and the sense of crisis the Commonwealth Games Federation is facing only seemed to deepen.

"We had a Board meeting two days ago where it was discussed as fully as we could,” CGF President Dame Louise Martin said on the shock cancellation by Victoria 2026 on the eve of the Commonwealth Youth Games in Trinidad and Tobago.

"What we said was as far as we are concerned, that is a Commonwealth Games of the future.

"We are concentrating now on this one here, and I certainly won't be talking about it because I need to concentrate on the youngsters. It's their Games and they need to have our full attention."

Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews blamed spiralling costs after the state’s contract was ripped up, claiming staging the Games in 2026 would require a budget of AUD$6 billion.

This has been disputed by the CGF, with vice-president Kereyn Smith suggesting to insidethegames that Victoria's figures “would have paid for the last three outstanding Games”.

The cost to Victoria of exiting its agreement has come in at AUD$380 million.

With officials looking forward to the start of the Commonwealth Youth Games, the withdrawal of Alberta, the only known bidder for 2030, was a further hammer blow.

Commonwealth Sport Canada admitted “the recent decision by the Victorian Government to withdraw from the 2026 Commonwealth Games was a significant factor in Alberta’s decision”.

Critics have long viewed the event as an outdated relic of the British Empire. Since 1970, the British Isles has held the Games five times, Australia three times and New Zealand and Canada twice, but not since 1990 and 1994 respectively. Beyond that, Malaysia and India are the only other hosts at Kuala Lumpur in 1998 and New Delhi in 2010.

Recent developments have amplified questions for the CGF over how it can provide multi-sport events with feasibility and relevance in the modern world.

Cities in the United Kingdom and Australia have flirted with the prospect of stepping in for 2026.

It is possible one or multiple cities may come to the rescue in an echo of what Birmingham did for last year's Games, after

PATRICK BURKE REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES

Durban was stripped of the event in 2017 due to financial issues.

That is far from certain, but even if it were to materialise, it is clear it would be, at best, a sticking plaster solution for the much bigger problem.

Many believe the Commonwealth Games now faces an existential crisis.

In many ways it is something of an enigma. The CGF points to its "Games Value Framework" which it claims shows economic and social benefits to hosting its events.

Birmingham 2022 was widely considered a success in terms of the quality of sport on display, the changes it drove in the West Midlands and the conversations it prompted on issues such as LGBTQ+ rights.

Leading CGF officials insist they already offer a flexible bidding process for potential hosts, pointing to recent reforms which made athletics and swimming the only two compulsory sports, and the launch of the "Commonwealth United" strategic plan which outlines aims through to 2034.

These include a pledge to assess the feasibility of hosting in new regions and considering a multi-country Games.

With Dame Louise reaching the end of her maximum two four-year terms, the challenge for Smith of New Zealand or Chris Jenkins of Wales, the two candidates who will stand to replace her as President in November, is enormous.

“I'm 18 months into the role and I spent the first 10 months actively listening to what people's hopes, aspirations and thoughts were, the good, the bad and the ugly and the amazing opportunities of the Commonwealth Sport Movement and Commonwealth Games and why it was special or not special,” CGF chief executive Katie Sadleir told insidethegames

“In any movement, you have the people who are absolutely passionate about it, the people who get really passionate about it for that one month and then the people who will knock it, but overall it was an ideal time in the lead-up to Birmingham which was such a success.

“I talked about an organisation that is nearly 100 years old, and I turned that around to saying how do you make that ‘100 years young’ in terms of reflecting and reframing for the future, and I think those words are important in terms of where we're at.

“We’ve made this commitment as part of that process to be open and up for doing things that are different.”

The Victoria and Alberta developments have hastened the need for solutions to broaden the scope of the Games, and Sadleir believes that “now we're in a situation where we can accelerate some of that thinking”.

Discussions have taken place regarding what the future may look like, and Sadleir has promised a full update at this year's General Assembly in Singapore, where the new President will be elected.

“My commitment to the Movement was we would have a plan in place by the time we hit our General Assembly this year, and we are currently looking at all sorts of options for that, but it would be fair to say we are quite flexible, so if we need to alter the dates we can,” Sadlier said.

“The Australian Games was early in 2026, whether that means we need to give a potential host a bit more time to move that by 12 months, we're open to that because clearly it is not a long time away, but whether it is a traditional Games like you saw in Birmingham or something that's a little bit different and a bit special, it's probably too early for me to say. But what we are doing is evaluating all options, and we will have something in place.”

Smith, the former chief executive and secretary general of the New Zealand Olympic Committee, is among the officials who is optimistic a solution can be found for 2026.

She believes the "huge shock" of Victoria's cancellation can make "people regroup and think about things hard".

"We were well aware of the need to modify and be flexible, and you've seen that in other multi-sport events over time, so I think we were on that pathway," Smith said.

"What you now have with Victoria is a scenario where we just need to reset and think ‘how do we move this forward and that timeframe?’

"The Federation is very committed to getting the Games up and running.

"These things are not insurmountable. What you find is sometimes it brings out opportunities that you didn't know about before, so we're just working our way through that.

Daniel Andrews withdrew Victoria as hosts of the 2026 Commonwealth Games, citing spiralling costs Photo: Getty Images

Kereyn Smith is one of two candidates to become the new CGF President. Photo: Getty Images

PATRICK BURKE REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES

"Certainly the idea of flexibility, sustainability, in terms of carbon footprint, the notion about cost and making the Games accessible to many countries, is really high on the agenda."

Sadleir has insisted that the CGF is open to all proposals, and wants to make pan-continental bids, for example in Africa or the Caribbean, feasible. In theory, staging the Games in multiple countries would split the cost burden, and is considered a realistic prospect in the medium-term.

"When I went to the Commonwealth Sports Ministers Conference, that was one of the challenges that we had from African countries who were saying ‘you are committed to the Commonwealth but you've never brought anything, so when is it our turn?’" Sadlier said.

"To take something like a Commonwealth Games to Africa is a significant challenge, so I said to them ‘we will start thinking about what that would look like and how could you do that’.

"Would it be something run across countries rather than one country? How about we sit down and do a feasibility study and do some real reflection on what an African Commonwealth Games would look like, because it could look quite different in terms of understanding where sports policy fits inside some of those countries and what their hopes and aspirations are in terms of the wider good of having a significant major event there.

"Thinking about where they want to be in the next 10 years and how could we work with them to create an event or a series of events that would help them with that. Nothing is off the table."

Some believe the Commonwealth Youth Games offers a tailor-made solution.

Former Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee President Brian Lewis, an influential figure in securing the Commonwealth Youth Games for the country, subscribes to such a view.

He argued the event for athletes aged 14 to 18 “must become the flagship” and must be treated “seriously and not a sideshow”. He insists it provides a way for the CGF to “embrace in particular the small island states”.

"I made the point that the Commonwealth Youth Games is the flagship event of the Commonwealth Games Federation and the Commonwealth Sport Movement," Lewis told insidethegames

"But a lot of the conservative, traditional, colonialist thinking sees the Commonwealth Games as the flagship."

Lewis is convinced that focussing on an event with youth at its core will help the CGF distance itself from accusations it is an outdated remnant of Britain's colonial past.

Sadleir and Lewis both pointed to workshops on emancipation that were held at the Commonwealth Youth Games in conjunction with Liverpool Slavery Museum.

The Trinidad and Tobago official believes the CGF "needs to be upfront and honest about the history of the Commonwealth Games, and we need to be upfront, open and honest about a conversation".

To safeguard the future of the Commonwealth Sport Movement, Lewis also believes the CGF “can’t approach solving this crisis with the traditional, colonial European mindset”, and must “think outside of the box” and “be much more flexible”.

Lewis described Dame Louise as a "breath of fresh air" with her efforts to transform the

organisation, although he claimed “she was not supported enough by the Executive". He believes the General Assembly in Singapore will provide a "critical election".

“I think depending on who is in the leadership, it will either make or break the Commonwealth Games Federation,” he said. “What it can't have is conservatism, so I think that's going to be an interesting aspect.

"I am confident that it's not a hopeless situation and where there is a will there is a way.”

Sadleir also extoled the potential of the Commonwealth Youth Games.

She described it as "much more than a sporting event", pointing to the workshops which provide forums for learning and discussion on important topics.

"Traditionally we've had a Games that happens once every four years and a Youth Games that happens once every four years and they’ve been of certain sizes and scales," she said.

"But you may decide once every eight years you have a more dispersed model, which is regional and smaller and then something more like a Birmingham.

"Youth Games, how often should you have them? The Youth Games is really important for the Commonwealth. For a lot of these young girls and boys, I've already had some of the leaders saying ‘that person is going to be the next Olympic medallist’.

CGF chief executive Katie Sadleir must navigate the organisation through its toughest test Photo: Getty Images

Dame Louise Martin is due to step down as CGF President after reaching her terms limit

Photo: Getty Images

“This is a good opportunity to test what a global competition at age group level is and inspire people in terms of a feeder to other major global events.

"So I think something like this is really important, and at this stage a lot of our Commonwealth countries have said they want to be involved in the Youth Games, because they see the Youth Games as

PATRICK BURKE REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES

something that's seven sports and they see the Commonwealth Games as something that's more than 20 sports.

"But there's no reason you couldn't adjust the number of sports into the Commonwealth Games.

“At this stage, it's about reflection and reframing and it's the right time to do that."

Commonwealth Games England chairman John Steele pointed to the importance of the Games for sports such as netball, squash and lawn bowls, where it represents the pinnacle.

"The essence of the Commonwealth Games is unique," Steele said to insidethegames

"The Games have bound Commonwealth countries in nearly a century of history and, in an increasingly volatile world, the Commonwealth is a band of nations that can stand together and support each other.

"Commonwealth sport captures this spirit, and its importance should not be underestimated or taken for granted.

"Nationally it provides an integrated team where Para athletes compete alongside non-disabled athletes, and Team England at Birmingham 2022 was the most diverse England sports team ever.

"At a time where society is looking for so much more from sport than just performance success, the Commonwealth Games answers that challenge. Given a chance the best is still to come."

It has been a torrid time for the CGF and the issue of how it moves forward in the absence of known bidders for its upcoming events is tough to address and has no clear answer.

Speculation that Birmingham may wish to host for the second consecutive time in 2026 was quickly extinguished when the city’s council declared bankruptcy, blaming a £760 million bill for equal pay claims.

Little is being ruled out at this stage, but the Presidential election will prove pivotal to the Commonwealth Games' direction.

Some believe that the Commonwealth Youth Games should be the future of the Movement Photo: Getty Images

The Commonwealth Games has struggled to shake off links to Britain's colonial past Photo: Getty Images

Light in the tunnel

Weightlifting was given the shock of its life when it was left off the Los Angeles 2028 programme, but the sport has turned its fortunes around. Brian Oliver reports.

The International Weightlifting Federation faced the battle of its life when the International Olympic Committee removed it from the sports programme for Los Angeles 2028 two years ago.

But the sport, blighted by historical doping issues which left its place under threat, is set to retain its spot in the Californian city.

It will be rewarded for tackling its issues with the election of new executive officials whose determination to clean up the sport has impressed the IOC.

Only a “change of culture” was said to be good enough for those in Lausanne, and

while the International Boxing Association has been expelled from the Olympic Movement the IWF has brought itself around.

While the sport is still waiting for complete confirmation it has been retained for 2028, an important vote has already been held to push for more medal events at Brisbane 2032.

During a daytime break at this year’s IWF World Championships, which ran in August and September in Riyadh, delegates from 114 nations unanimously approved a "roadmap for the future" that will guide the sport away from its troubled past on "a journey of positive change".

A 39-page strategic plan document lays out the IWF’s plans based on four pillars that cover athletes, events, governance and marketing and communications.

The document covers the period 2024 to 2032 and highlights more than 100 actions and strategies that will come into effect gradually from next year.

It will be monitored and updated along the way by the nine-person steering group that created it, chaired by IWF interim chief executive and communications director Pedro Adrega, who told the IWF Congress that the plan was “ambitious yet realistic”.

Under the athletes’ pillar, the roadmap

BRIAN OLIVER COLUMNIST, INSIDETHEGAMES

declares the IWF’s intent to seek a bigger presence for weightlifting in Brisbane.

Its athlete quota has been slashed since 2016 by more than half to 120 for Paris 2024, where there will be 10 medal events.

For LA 2028 there is currently none, with the IOC’s decision to remove the sport from the schedule also due to a corruption scandal and a series of governance failures.

Reforms have been pushed through under a new leadership since June last year and the IWF was always confident that the IOC would change its mind about LA 2028. That now seems certain to be confirmed.

The target documented in the strategic plan is 16 medal events for Brisbane 2032, eight each for men and women, and 160 athletes.

Another Olympic-related aim is to build better relations with the IOC by increasing the presence of IWF officials on IOC Commissions.

Inviting IOC members to major eventsCuban member Maria de la Caridad Colón was in Riyadh - and periodically inviting the IOC President and senior leaders to IWF Executive Board meetings are other ambitions.

The ultimate goal is to have an IOC member "representing" weightlifting.

Like many other of the actions and strategies, the plan to seek bigger Olympic quotas is good news for athletes - "the central pillar of our sport" according to IWF President Mohammed Jalood.

Athletes will be "humanised" at competitions in a way that enhances their status and improves the viewing experience for spectators and broadcast audiences.

The IWF accepts that unattractive sport presentation is one of weightlifting’s weaknesses, which can make it "repetitive and unexciting to casual spectators".

Antonio Urso, the IWF’s general secretary, said weightlifting needs new rules to become simpler and more attractive to young athletes and fans.

“My dream is to cancel the press-out, to make weightlifting simple - you lift the bar, or you don’t lift the bar,” he said.

Small movements of the arm or elbow, or failure to keep arms fully locked, can lead to referees judging an attempt invalid when there is no infringement visible to the audience and, frequently, coaches and athletes too.

Security forces were called to the arena at Rio 2016 when there were protests after the Iranian super-heavyweight Behdad Salimi was denied a medal because of three press-out failures.

More recently, the American Mattie Rogers complained about a decision in this year’s Pan American Championships that could not be reviewed because video playback was not available.

“We must reduce the enormous number of referees and technical officials in a competition, which is especially important in youth competitions,” Urso added.

“Young athletes should enjoy it, not worry about the referees - if their lift is not quite perfect, it’s okay.”

Athlete introductions will get a makeover while those for technical officials will be reviewed.

There will be better use of graphics, and more use of images and other athlete information on the scoreboard in breaks between lifts and sessions.

Champions and world record holders will be rewarded when a prize money policy is drawn up.

“We must tell the stories of our athletes, they are our stars,” Adrega said. “They deserve optimal conditions.”

Away from the platform, the IWF will work on a personal level with the sport’s stars, use

digital platforms to give athletes more of a voice and more exposure, create an ambassador programme for major events, use retired athletes as role models in different parts of the world and establish an annual awards.

Educational programmes will be created "aimed at preventing injuries and mental health problems in weightlifting" and there will be "alert mechanisms to deal with harassment or violence in the sport, namely through the appointed integrity and safeguarding officer".

Further support in the form of athlete scholarships is being sought by the Athletes’ Commission, whose chair Forrester Osei said there was also strong support for a new transition programme to help athletes into coaching or officiating roles at the end of their career.

“Athletes speak with passion about thisthey want an opportunity to stay in the sport,” Osei said.

The programme would guide retired athletes on the pathway to a coaching licence or towards becoming an international technical official.

They will be needed in officiating to meet the demands of another of the actions“appointing a minimum 30 per cent of young (under 40) international technical officials for youth and junior events, ensuring increased opportunities for the younger generation of ITOs”.

There is a commitment to “strengthening tools, mechanisms and sanctions to de-motivate any athlete or member of their entourage to violate the anti-doping rules”.

In line with Urso’s view the strategic plan acknowledges that, in the era of video

Weightlifting looks set to retain its Olympic place at Los Angeles 2028

Photo: Getty Images

International Weightlifting Federation reforms look to have kept the sport's long Olympic history alive Photo: Getty Images

BRIAN OLIVER COLUMNIST, INSIDETHEGAMES

playback, there are too many referees and jury members - eight in total - officiating at each session. A review would “give more authority to each official while reducing the number of ITOs for each session”.

There is an “action towards simplifying the rules”, said Adrega, with the topic causing widespread debate when raised by Urso in July at the end of a lengthy consultation process involving 250 stakeholders in the sport.

The IWF will also be committed to “consolidating weightlifting’s presence in multi-sport events”, including the European Games from 2027.

It will “test and implement new events on the calendar and if successful apply for Olympic recognition, initially at Youth Olympic Games”. This could lead to street weightlifting or a mixed team event featuring on the youth programme from 2030.

There is good news for member federations in the strategic plan, with enhanced funding on the way - about $1 million a year by 2028 and up another 15 per cent from there by 2032.

The IWF will seek to “progressively reduce the financial burden of competition expenses” on national federations - travel, accommodation, entry fees and anti-doping fees - and will create a Membership Committee to give support with electoral procedures, sanctioning and constitution changes.

The creation of an IWF marketing department will be the first significant step towards securing global and long-term commercial partnerships.

In communications, the roadmap plans include developing a media network around the world that is “capable of sharing the IWF’s information”, as well as reactivating an IWF digital periodical magazine.

“Part of the job is complete,” said Jalood in a foreword to the plan.

“But the most difficult part remains to be done - to work hard to give these nice words and actions a concrete reality.”

The Congress also adopted a new constitution, basically a simplified and tightened version of the existing one, but one which will make procedural changes easier for the IWF.

Adrega, who is based in the Olympic capital Lausanne and speaks French, Portuguese, English, Spanish and Greek, spent 22 years at World Aquatics.

When he started as communications director in February, his aim was to raise the profile of weightlifting, and especially its athletes.

In a statement, the IWF said Adrega had “given new dynamics to the communication strategy within the IWF” and highlighted the fact that he was chairing the roadmap project.

“On the athletes’ side, and after having approved in recent months an athlete gender identity policy and appointed a safeguarding and integrity officer, the IWF validated a human rights and non-discriminatory policy, which applies to all participants involved in our International Federation operations,” the governing body added.

“The final document was largely inspired by the IOC policy on this important matter.”

Under the terms of the new policy, the IWF “commits to respect the human rights of athletes and advance their protection, particularly regarding issues in connection with doping”.

The IWF also “places particular emphasis on identifying and addressing differential impacts based on gender and on promoting gender equality and preventing all forms of harassment, including sexual harassment”. Protecting the environment, sustainability and ensuring the security of everybody

involved in competitions are other conditions of the human rights policy, which must be followed by “all IWF entities, and also by its commercial partners, service providers, and organisers of IWF events”.

As for Paris 2024 Olympic qualifying, a new “exceptional circumstances” commission was created in line with the rules.

Athletes must participate in five qualifying events, two of which are mandatory - the World Championships in Riyadh and the World Cup in Thailand in April.

In “exceptional circumstances” for these two events - such as travel restrictions or a serious accident - athletes can apply for exemption provided they do so within five days of the end of the competition.

The Commission, three of whose members will be recommended by the International Testing Agency, which carries out all anti-doping procedures for the IWF, will decide whether or not “exceptional circumstances are present”.

The IWF’s changes, for now at least, mean that the sport currently has an Olympic future which will stretch well beyond Paris.

Iranian super-heavyweight Behdad Salimi was denied a medal at Rio 2016 because of three press-out failures, but rules could be simplified Photo: Getty Images

Mattie Rogers complained about a decison made when video playback was not available Photo: Getty Images

Weightlifting is hoping to increase its number of quota places for future Olympics Photo: Getty Images

MIKE ROWBOTTOM CHIEF FEATURE WRITER, INSIDETHEGAMES

Playing both sides

Iwas watching David Attenborough’s Life In Colour programme the other day, which features a bird which can completely change the colour of its feathers according to its habitat and the time of year.

And, for some reason, I thought of the International Olympic Committee.

I wonder if the shift in the IOC’s position over Ukraine in the last 18 months can be expressed in a single sentence?

Let’s see. That wasn’t the sentence by the way. Although, thinking about it, maybe it was.

Four days after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24 last year, the IOC recommended that Russian and Belarusian athletes should be banned from all international competition.

This hastened and hardened the response of much of the international sporting world and many federations, notably World Athletics, acted accordingly.

After making it clear that it would not normally seek to punish athletes for the decisions of a Government if they were not actively participating in them, the IOC had said that the war in Ukraine was an exceptional circumstance and the Executive Board had made the decision in order to “protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all participants”.

At the Closing Ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, IOC President Thomas Bach called for politicians to follow the example of athletes and “give peace a chance”. Four days later, the invasion began.

“Sometimes you wish you could do more and this was the wish I expressed in the Closing Ceremony,” Bach said.

“Then you see that all the efforts were for nothing, that this inspiration was not strong enough and then it’s horrifying.

“Again, we are coming to our limits. We have no police force, we have no military.

“We can offer moral support and can help to shed light on this situation, but there our influence ends.”

And yet, in the intervening months, the position of the IOC has shifted to the point

where, on February 18 this year, the European Union passed a resolution condemning it for moving to explore ways of allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics as neutrals.

The motion was adopted with 444 votes in favour, 26 against and 37 abstentions.

It stated that allowing competitors from the two countries to participate, as neutrals or not, “runs counter to those countries’ multifaceted isolation and will be used by both regimes for propaganda purposes”.

The resolution also urged its 27 member nations to pressure the IOC into reversing its decision which has been labelled as “an embarrassment to the international world of sport”.

There is a genuine argument to be had over the question of whether athletes should be made responsible for the actions of their Governments - but one presumes that argument took place within IOC circles before the February 28 statement was made. The essentials of this debate have not altered since.

So, has anything else changed?

Has Russia withdrawn from Ukraine? No. Has Russia refrained from making political capital out of any of its sporting achievements in international competition? No.

The only thing that has changed, it seemsgradually, imperceptibly - is the IOC, pivoting on the idea that its original position was made with reference to the safety of athletes. Which athletes? And how are things any safer now?

Bach has hinted - but not stated - that the imminent IOC Session in Mumbai may see decisive movement on the question of whether Russian and Belarusian athletes, already allowed to compete in many sports as neutrals, should also be able to do so at next year’s Paris 2024 Olympics.

Important discussions on this topic are likely to take place in India, whether publicly or in private.

Russian and Belarusian team sports are already ruled out of the Games, even as neutrals. As, in theory at least, are athletes with direct links to the armed forces, or

those who have offered clear support for the Russian military action.

But if, as seems likely, the IOC eventually attempts to play both sides of this question and allows individual Russian and Belarusian athletes in selected events to take part, it will surely only be a matter of time before the sporting world sees a defiant post on social media, or a brazenly displayed Z badge supporting the military action. Or hears words of approbation for medals won from the Kremlin.

How will their stated support for the Ukrainian cause appear then?

It is an appallingly complex situation for the IOC. But they are currently resembling Groucho Marx who famously declared: “Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well I have others.”

Groucho, however, was joking.

The International Olympic Committee has rolled back its original stance on Russian athletes competing at Paris 2024. Mike Rowbottom explores the U-turn.

The IOC's differing stance on Ukraine has drawn comparisons with a Groucho Marx quote Photo: Getty Images