EVENT REVIEW


A PASSAGE FROM INDIA


Brigid Simmonds shares her Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games experience and believes that although the country has much to learn as a host nation it’s certainly heading in the right direction


asked whether India was right to take on its first ever multi-games international event. But for me, visiting India for the first time, there was much to be positive about and I can’t wait to go back. After the success of Melbourne as host


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for the last Commonwealth Games in 2006, everyone said India would be last minute. It was perhaps much more last minute than expected and bad work- manship – a collapsing bridge and a Games Village which clearly needed more time before its occupants arrived – was not good for anyone. But my wel- come was wonderful, I didn’t get food


he press and media frenzy be- fore the Commonwealth Games began was entirely negative and even once it was over many


poisoning, I did see and was nibbled by a mosquito but didn’t suffer from Denge fever and the people were so keen to help, it made up for so much. As chair of the Sport and Recreation


Alliance (the new name for CCPR, the umbrella organisation for the governing bodies of sport and recreation), we have been helped for the past two Common- wealth Games by Jersey providing our accreditation. Inevitably there were too many people keen to represent England and perhaps as a UK organisation it was only fitting that our badges represented a member of the Commonwealth out- side the British Isles. Speaking to Jersey’s Chef de Mission, who was living in the Athletes Village, he was quite clear that when they arrived not everything in the


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athletes, living quarters was right, but he also said that when they asked for it to be put right, it was done so immediately and with much enthusiasm. Before going to India I was hit by a taxi


when running in Barcelona and broke my left leg. No plaster, but pinned inter- nally. I have to admit to being a hopeless patient. I hate sitting still and then wondered why every night my leg was swollen because I had spent too much time hopping up and down. India to my mind was likely to be more


restful. Staying in a hotel with no cook- ing obligations, accredited transport between venues and six days of watching sport was bound to be easier. And so it proved, but perhaps not quite in the way I had expected!


Issue 4 2010 © cybertrek 2010


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