The Commonwealth Games have grown more than ten-fold since the first 400 athletes took part 80 years ago. In that time they have come to embody the values that the Commonwealth itself stands for
You would have to look long and hard through the small print of the results of the 1990 Commonwealth Games to find the name of Fabian Muyaba; not surprisingly because the sprinter was modestly ranked 138th in the world that year. Yet his presence in the first heat of the 100 metres on the opening day of those Games in Auckland was of the utmost significance and meant more in the long term than the eventual victory in the final by future Olympic champion Linford Christie.
Muyaba, aged only 19, did well to get to the semi-finals, but the very fact that he was there at all, representing Zimbabwe, was what counted. The Africans were back in the Games after 1986’s mass boycott in Edinburgh in protest against continuing rugby links between New Zealand and the apartheid regime of South Africa and the failure of the British government to apply economic sanctions. When the Games were held in Victoria, British Columbia, four years later, dramatic changes in the South African political landscape meant that, after an absence of 36 years, a racially-mixed team from that country appeared at last. Among the members was South Africa’s 800 metres runner, Hezekiel Sepeng, who finished second to a Kenyan, Patrick Konchellah.
The threat of anti-apartheid action by African, Asian and Caribbean members of the Commonwealth had hung over the Games ever since 1974. Later, at the 1982 gathering in Brisbane, the Games Federation, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Sir Shridath (‘Sonny’) Ramphal, had agonised long and hard before issuing a 900-word condemnation of South Africa’s policy which, it was hoped, would placate the objectors. But in 1986, 32 countries stayed away from the Edinburgh Games, and it seemed to those of us watching day after day under grey Scottish skies to be more of a requiem than a celebration, despite the lively competition among the participating athletes.
The man most responsible for the Games being established in the first place would have found the apartheid issue a huge dilemma. Melville Marks Robinson, familiarly known as ‘Bobby’, was sports editor of the local newspaper in Hamilton, Ontario. As manager of the Canadian team at the 1928 Olympic Games one of his medal winners was Phil Edwards, from British Guiana (now Guyana), who could claim no Canadian eligibility – Robinson had enterprisingly recruited Edwards because his country of birth did not have an Olympic Committee of its own. Robinson had been authorised by Canada’s Amateur Athletic Union to investigate the possibilities of promoting a ‘British Empire Games’. The ideal which appealed to him was that, compared with the Olympics, such a gathering should be “merrier and less stern, and will substitute the stimulus of novel adventure for the pressure of international rivalry”.
In the 1920s, and for a long time before, the Olympics were characterised by chauvinism and controversy. The modern Olympic movement had begun in 1896. An idea for an Empire sports festival had actually been suggested five years before that in magazine articles and a letter to The Times by enthusiastic correspondent, J. Astley Cooper, without ever being taken up. Robinson was much more persuasive and it seemed logical that, for the first British Empire Games in August 1930, he should be chairman, with Hamilton, his home town, as the venue.
With the world in economic depression, this was hardly the most opportune time for such a novel adventure to begin but the Hamilton city authorities generously guaranteed a sum of C$30,000 towards the visitors’ costs. Ten countries responded – Australia, Bermuda, British Guiana, England, Ireland, Newfoundland (then a self-governing dominion), New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa and Wales – and some 400 competitors took part in athletics, bowls, boxing, rowing, swimming, diving and wrestling. The champions included, most notably, Percy Williams, who had won both the 100 and 200 metres for Canada at the 1928 Olympics, and for England, Lord Burghley, who had been the 400 metres hurdles gold-medallist at those same Games. It was something of a free-and-easy affair – the mile was won for England by a Welshman, Reg Thomas, who offered his services because his own country could not, in the end, afford to send any athletes. The
Games organisers also brought in US crews to provide the Canadians with opposition in one of the rowing events for which no one else had entered. Unremarked at the time was the fact that there were only seven events for women in Hamilton, all of them in swimming and diving.
Political issues were soon encountered. The next Games, in 1934, had originally been awarded to South Africa but, when the various national delegations met during the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, it was readily recognised that the country’s overt racial discrimination would cause problems for some competitors and the decision was taken to switch the venue to London. Phil Edwards must have gladdened Bobby Robinson’s heart because in the colours of British Guiana he won the 880 yards – the Games would not go metric until 1970 – ahead of a South African.
The 1938 Games were awarded to Sydney, and they were a great success despite the depletion of the British teams which, in order to arrive in Australia in time for the start of the competition, had to set sail before Christmas 1937 – all in all they remained away from home four months. The Sydney Games witnessed a historic victory for Ansdale Henricus, a boxer from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), to give Asia its first Commonwealth title. They remained very much the ‘Empire Games’ for many more years with the same countries always dominating the medals table – Australia, Canada and England. It was not until 1954 that the title changed to the ‘British Empire and Commonwealth Games’, then the ‘British Commonwealth Games’ in 1970 and finally the Commonwealth Games in 1978. Even at the 1978 Games in Edmonton, Alberta, the same three countries still won the majority of medals – 280 between them compared to 117 for everyone else combined – but the broad profile of the various contests had changed. Medals went to the Bahamas, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Trinidad & Tobago, Western Samoa and Zambia, among others.
Bobby Robinson died in 1974 at the age of 86, but he lived to enjoy the fact that his creation had become popularly known as the ‘Friendly Games’, though there was no lack of competitive zeal. Numerous outstanding sportsmen and women have won gold medals over the Games’ history, including in 1954, England’s Roger Bannister who earlier that year had been the first man to break the four minute mile. He famously won that event in Vancouver from John Landy, of Australia, who went on to succeed him as world record-holder.
More than 1,500 competitors from 46 countries competed in the 1978 Games, but that bears no comparison to the situation in the 21st century. In Melbourne four years ago there were 4,049 participants – ten times the 1930 figure – from 71 countries, and there were 16 sports on the schedule, including the recently introduced team events of basketball, hockey, netball and seven-a-side rugby-union, plus an activity which had not yet even been invented when the Games were first held – the triathlon, involving in unbroken sequence swimming, cycling and running. More important than this though, was the fact that medals were won by 39 different countries, some of them unimaginable when Bobby Robinson was laying his plans almost 80 years earlier: Bangladesh, Botswana, Cameroon, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Seychelles, to name but a few.
Robinson had concluded in his official report that the 1930 Games had “accomplished a great deal,” adding: “Anyone who was fortunate enough to be there will know that it is true – perfect harmony reigned all the time – and there was a spirit about the competitions that certainly has never yet, to my knowledge, been found in Olympic competitions”. Even in this age of highly professionalised sport, which again Robinson could not possibly have envisaged, it can be predicted that much the same will be said once the Commonwealth Games of 2010 in New Delhi are over.
