The commonwealth games

The Commonwealth Games are something o f an oddity in the world of modem sport. They do not make a fortune, nor do they expect to. They do not have an array of commercial backers and sponsors, or an army of multilingual executives carrying out their business in a busthng headquarters. The Games do not fill the sports pages in the way they did half a century ago. They do not even appear to have any clearly defined purpose other than that ascribed to them by their founder, Melville Marks ‘Bobby’ Robinson, back in 1930, when he had become thoroughly fed up with the extreme nationalism and intensity o f the Olympic Games. The Americans, especially, irked him. ‘The event will be designed on an Olympic model,’ Robinson said, ‘but these Games will be very different. They should be merrier and less stem, and will substitute the stimulus o f a novel adventure for the pressure o f intemational rivalry.’ The British sense of fair play and sportsmanship would be paramount.