The Friendly Games

The Commonwealth Games evoke a cordial spirit that the much larger Olympics can never hope to match. Mike Rowbottom takes us through the history of The Friendly Games, a sporting event like no other.

The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary political association of 54 member states, almost all of which are former territories of the British Empire.

Currently, 15 of them recognise Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state, while five have their own monarchs and the rest are republics.

Member states have no legal obligations to one another, but are largely connected through their use of the English language and historical ties.

The Commonwealth Charter defines their shared values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, as promoted by the quadrennial Commonwealth Games.

This unique event began as the British Empire Games in 1930, before becoming the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954. From 1970, it was the British Commonwealth Games, before the name Commonwealth Games was settled upon in 1978.

The Olympic Games’ smaller and homelier relation - self-styled as the Friendly Games - is about to take place in England for the third time after the 1934 edition in London and the 2002 event in Manchester. This time, Birmingham is preparing itself to host.

The Pierre de Coubertin figure for the Commonwealth Games was, fittingly, a more down-to-earth character. His name was Bobby Robinson, and he was the manager of the Canadian athletics team at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.

Robinson was also sports editor of the local newspaper in Hamilton, Ontario, and enabled the first Games to take place there after persuading the local authorities to contribute towards the teams’ travelling expenses.

Staggeringly, in a time of worldwide economic recession, he persuaded the powers that be to shell out $30,000.

After earning a reputation as a hard bargainer on behalf of local fruit and vegetable growers in the face of attempts at price-cutting from

MIKE ROWBOTTOM CHIEF FEATURE WRITER, INSIDETHEGAMES

wholesale buyers, Robinson was what might nowadays be known as a “can-do man”.

He was also a man who reacted badly to the words “no can do”. And he didn’t like bullies.

In his absorbing book The Commonwealth Games - Extraordinary Stories Behind the Medals, my colleague Brian Oliver describes how, in 1927, Robinson discussed with Howard Crocker, a respected Olympic figure who had managed the first Canadian team to attend a Games in 1908, how home athletes could be given more opportunities for top-class competition.

“Crocker mentioned the Festival of Empire, hosted by London in 1911 and featuring an international sporting championship,” Oliver writes.

“He also told Robinson of an earlier suggestion, from the Englishman John Astley Cooper in the early 1890s, to stage a ‘Pan-Britannic Festival’ of culture and sport. Robinson liked what he heard and began planning immediately.”

What gave Robinson’s preparations added impetus, Oliver adds, was his anger at the perceived lack of respect Canada was given at the Olympics in Amsterdam.

The Toronto Star reported that meetings to discuss the Empire Games were held in the Dutch capital “as a direct result of the dominance, real or attempted, by Germany and the United States at the Olympic meet”.

“Robinson finally boiled over and, after consultation with other Canadian officials, met representatives of the other British teams,” Oliver said.

Canada lodged an official complaint at the Olympics, citing a number of incidents including the lack of a national flag when Percy Williams received his 100 metres gold medal.

The fact that American athletes were allowed to train on the track but Canadian athletes were not was another sticking point, as well as a disputed judging decision in the women’s 100m.

The Canadians felt their sprinter had been wrongly denied victory in favour of an American, and further alleged a direct insult to a team official by Avery Brundage, then the most influential United States member of the Olympic Movement and a future International Olympic Committee President.

The Toronto Star wrote of “serious trouble brewing between the Canadian and US teams and between the Canadian representatives and the IOC”.

At one point Robinson told one IOC member: “We know the Canadians are getting the run-around here and we don’t like it!”

He wanted the Empire Games to be about “sport for sport’s sake, devoid of petty jealousies and sectional prejudices”.

“The event will be designed on an Olympic model, but these Games will be very different,” he added.

“They should be merrier and less stern and will substitute the stimulus of a novel adventure for the pressure of international rivalry.”

In his introduction to Oliver’s book, Brendan Foster - who won 1500m bronze at the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, 5,000m silver at the 1974 Games in Christchurch and 10,000m gold at the 1978 edition in Edmonton - offered his own assessment of the event’s particular merits.

“The thing that sets the Commonwealth Games apart is that everybody speaks English, so you can have a chat with your rivals and sink a beer after the race,” he said. “Kip Keino came and congratulated me when I won that medal in 1970 - that would never have happened in the Olympics, and not just because the other runners didn’t necessarily speak English.

“When your rivals were from the Soviet Bloc they were not even allowed to be friendly.

“Nationalism is not such a big thing as it is at the Olympics. Calling them ‘The Friendly Games’ is absolutely spot-on.”

It was essential for this new, spirited venture that the first Games should go well. They did.

Bevil Rudd, a war hero and the winner of gold, silver and bronze on the track at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, covered the 1930 British Empire Games for the Daily Telegraph in London. He reported that they were “without doubt an unqualified success, a significant beacon in empire relations”. He added that they must be repeated.

Four years later they were - in London. Four years after that it was Sydney that played host.

Canada, England and Australia have remained mainstays of the enterprise throughout, and the overall medals table reflects that, with Australia top on 2,415, of which 932 are gold.

England are second on 2,144, with 714 gold, and Canada have 484 gold in their total haul of 1,555.

The other major medal winners in Games history are India, New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland, Kenya, Nigeria and Wales.

The ties of empire, still felt so fiercely by many back in 1930, have cooled and transmuted. As the name changes have underlined, the perception of empire has changed to the point where it is now not mentioned. Indeed, in recent years, Britain has been called upon to apologise to those nations profoundly affected.

Canada's Bobby Robinson was the founding father of the

Commonwealth Games. Photo: CGF

MIKE ROWBOTTOM CHIEF FEATURE WRITER, INSIDETHEGAMES

But, somehow, the friendliness has remained, despite Robinson’s proposed “merriment” being conspicuously absent at some moments in Games history.

Most notably was when the Games returned for a second time to Edinburgh, after a period of 16 years, in 1986.

The attitude of Margaret Thatcher’s Government towards British sporting links with apartheid-era South Africa prompted 32 countries, largely from Africa and the Caribbean, to boycott the event in the Scottish city in protest.

South Africa had not been present at the Games since 1958, and would not be welcomed back until 1994, but every day the list of those boycotting grew.

Bermuda withdrew on the day of the Opening Ceremony, with their team turning up in blazers before learning that they would not be competing.

Eventually, more than half of the Commonwealth nations stayed away, and there was talk that the Games might even have to be cancelled entirely given the perilous lack of sponsorship and funding.

Up stepped Robert Maxwell, then owner of the Daily Mirror, who described himself as the “saviour” of the enterprise to anyone who would listen. This included, on one exalted occasion, Queen Elizabeth II herself.

Exactly how much money Maxwell actually put into the Games was never made clear. Oliver writes that, by the final reckoning, he paid less than £300,000 towards the final deficit of nearly £4 million.

His friend Ryōichi Sasakawa, a Japanese businessman of enormous wealth and very dubious reputation, was introduced at one of Maxwell’s trumpeting pre-Games press conferences.

Aged 87 at the time, Sasakawa told reporters - of whom, dumbfounded, I was one - that he was 27 years old and would live to the age of 200.

Back in the real world, Sasakawa did donate £1.265 million to the Edinburgh Games and it should be acknowledged that Maxwell’s ego trip had the additional effect of bringing much-needed publicity.

Maxwell also reduced the losses by negotiating with creditors, among them two local councils.

From that nadir the Games rose to a more joyful place four years later when they were held, with huge success, in Auckland.

That said, even those Games were shadowed by the possibility of another African boycott until shortly before they opened, when it became known that the famed anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu, then Archbishop of Cape Town, would be arriving in the early hours at Auckland airport.

Only a few reporters, and a TV crew, were waiting for him. He was exceedingly polite and helpful. He said that there would not be a mass political boycott of the Auckland Games such as the one that had afflicted Edinburgh, and indeed there wasn't.

From the Opening Ceremony, where Māori women sang an enchanting song of welcome to all, to the Closing Ceremony, where a formal acceptance of the Commonwealth flag from the next host city, Victoria, was witnessed by the Queen, the 1990 Commonwealth Games were a wonder.

The closing also included exuberant activities by thousands of children, while Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sung the beloved New Zealand hymn Now is the Hour.

In the pool, Britain’s Olympic 100m breaststroke champion Adrian Moorhouse finished more than a second and a half clear of his nearest opponent and Australia’s Karen van Wirdum set a Commonwealth record of 56.48sec in the women’s 100m freestyle.

Britain’s 21-year-old Richie Woodhall earned light middleweight gold, part of his preparations for annexing the WBC super middleweight title from 1998 to 1999.

At Mount Smart Stadium, Britain’s Peter Elliott, outsprinting Kenya’s Wilfred Kirochi, earned the gold medal his talent merited, while Kirochi’s illustrious compatriot John Ngugi, the Olympic 5,000m champion, suffered a rare defeat after making up 35m on the pack following a fall. He established a 40m lead at the bell, only to be stalked and beaten on the line by Australia’s Andrew Lloyd.

The course of the Games was re-set. Victoria, Kuala Lumpur, Manchester, Melbourne, Delhi, Glasgow, Gold Coast - all were animated by the Friendly Games spirit.

The 1998 Kuala Lumpur Games succeeded in bringing together professional athletes and amateurs in much the same manner as big city marathons.

The Olympics, with their stringent qualifications, would not have offered someone like Candace Blades the chance to contest the heptathlon. Yet this 18-year-old schoolgirl from Belize, a novice to the event, memorably stayed the course with the motherly encouragement of Britain’s world number one and soon to be Olympic champion Denise Lewis.

Those same Games saw the introduction of a hugely popular sport that, in 2016, made its way onto the Olympic programme - rugby sevens. The spectacle was hugely enjoyed by crowds that packed out the 5,000-seater Kelana Jaya Stadium where, eventually, the great Jonah Lomu romped victoriously in celebration of New Zealand’s gold.

The 2006 Games in Melbourne were glorious - a Commonwealth version of the Sydney Olympics held six years earlier. Those Games had a motto: “Elite sport is only half the story”.

The other half was provided by competitors from the likes of Niue, a Pacific Island of fewer than 2,000 people. Or fellow Pacific island Nauru, effectively one large phosphate mine, that once again sent weightlifters seeking to maintain the medal-winning tradition of Marcus Stephen, who took a gold and two silvers at those Auckland 1990 Games.

That kind of diversity is something the Olympic Games - which long ago pinched some of Robinson’s best ideas, including medal podiums, volunteers and Athletes’ Villages - is still striving to achieve.

The small Pacific island of Niue is an example of the diversity of the Commonwealth Games. Photo: Getty Images