Sport has a great capacity to bring the people of the world together and to take spectators’ minds off the mundane in life, including destructive politics.
We see the joyousness of Olympics gatherings or the recent football World Cup in Rio. Then we had the exhilarating Commonwealth Games where athletes and sports administrators from dozens of countries of different ethnicities and colours all came together in great joy and endeavour.
The Commonwealth Games is also extremely interesting given its origins in the British Empire, trying to understand which countries attend and which do not and why, and which were banned from attending (like Fiji) and allowed at the last moment.
It is also useful to not get caught up in nationalistic fervour, when we see medal tallie which imply certain countries are the “champions” of the Commonwealth Games, when the limited successes of small poor developing countries may well be more praiseworthy.
Strange origins
Once called the Empire Games, the Commonwealth Games is now attended by countries which were once part of the British Empire, and this is still acknowledged today with the Queen of England doing the symbolic opening.
The Games include the “dominions” which were white-dominated settler colonies like Australia, NZ and Canada. The US, large parts of which were once also colonies of Britain, some 250 years ago were not. Why? Nor does it include the Republic of Ireland, which is just across the water from Britain.
The Games include colonies of non-white people who were in colonial times, terribly oppressed by the British, such as India and Zimbabwe. It’s a sign of progress that in the Commonwealth Games today, the once-oppressed countries are able to forgive and join the once-oppressor countries in celebration of sport and friendly nationalistic competition.
But Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
A strange aspect of the Commonwealth Games is that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland compete as entities separate from England, while in the Olympics they compete together as “Britain”.
When one talks about a British colony, the typical image is of brown, black, or yellow peoples once colonised, controlled and exploited by white British people, not of white people colonised by other whites. Some historians know only too well that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were once the earliest colonies of England and just as brutally conquered and exploited as any Indian or African colony and peoples.
Four hundred years ago, the inhumane English conquest and treatment of the Welsh, the Scots and Irish drove many of them to the US, Canada, Australia and NZ. For many, their animosities towards the English still continues.
Not too long ago the daily international news used to be about the civil war and violence in Northern Ireland with the IRA and the Sinn Fein battling the British Army just as we see the battles between Palestine, Hamas and Israel. The Irish haven’t forgiven the British and the Republic of Ireland isn’t part of the Games but Northern Ireland participates.
Scotland itself has long had a powerful political movement for independence from London and the English Parliament. It is no coincidence that prominent in this year’s Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was a reminder that the host city of Glasgow gave Nelson Mandela the keys to the city, while he was still in prison in South Africa for opposing apartheid.
This was such an incredibly symbolic and powerful gesture of freedom loving white Scottish people, expressing their heartfelt solidarity with the blacks in their decades of struggle against apartheid and the oppression by the whites in South Africa.
The Commonwealth Games should perhaps be retitled “The Free Commonwealth Games”.
Also prominent in this year’s Games opening was a great charitable aspect, with fundraising for UNICEF’s worthy global work for the welfare of poor children, with an equally global participation of UNICEF workers and their host children.
And Fiji?
In Fiji, there was very little media fanfare about the participation by Fiji which had been expelled from the Commonwealth in 2009 when Bainimarama refused to hold elections as he had promised.
There has always been debate, as also in the Olympics, about the appropriateness of using political issues and criteria to punish sports people, who are usually in no position to influence political outcomes in their home countries.
Nearly always, the political masters who are being sanctioned could not care less about the sanctions or the sports people who are being victimised.
I am sure Fiji sports people were so relieved they had been readmitted to the Games (as was clear from the joy of our representatives) they did not prefer any media attention in case they attracted some evil eyes again.
The only blemish was our rugby sevens team being excluded on the strange grounds that the draw had already been made. I suspect Fiji was possibly denied a good chance at a medal.
With the lifting of sanctions against Fiji occurring at the last minute, other sports which might have had a chance of a medal did not have enough time to prepare or enter.
Pacific the
real champs?
One unattractive side of the Commonwealth Games, or indeed any games in which teams “play for their country”, is the chauvinistic ceremonial flag-raising and playing of the national anthem of the gold medal country.
There is also much hooh hah about the medal tally in which countries with the highest number of gold medals or total medals are proudly presented as the “champion” countries.
For the 2014 Commonwealth Games, England, Australia, Scotland and New Zealand were at the top of the tally.
To be fair, all other things being equal, the numbers of medals won also depends on the total population of the country, the amount of taxpayers’ money that is devoted to sports, and the particular sports being played (not every country has swimmers or gymnastics).
And why take only the number of gold medals, when athletes also value a silver or bronze medal. So let us calculate for each country total points with some weighting system: eg three for a gold, two for a silver and one for a bronze (you could also use five, three and one).
Then for each country, we can estimate the total points per million population as I have done in Table 1.
These are the 37 ranked countries which obtained at least a medal, out of the 71 countries participating.
The results are quite remarkable for our small Pacific countries with their tiny populations: Nauru (1st), Kiribati (3rd), Samoa (4th). Of course, Fiji’s rank (26) would have jumped with just another medal or two.
As in the Olympics, prominent near the top are some of the poorer West Indian countries like Jamaica (9th) and Trinidad (14th) (good to ask why).
NZ (7th) and Australia (12th) are also usually near the top, evidence of their great love for sports and outdoor activities in general.
Nearly always near the bottom are countries like India (33), Pakistan (36) and Bangladesh (37).
Students might like to play around with other criteria, such as total points per $USbillion of GDP.
The Commonwealth Games results are here at this website (http://www.thecgf.com/sports/results.asp), and the GDP or population data can be easily obtained from the World Bank or IMF websites.
Students can look at my similar analysis (and a bit more) for the 2012 Olympic Games, (available here: https://narseyonfiji.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/who-are-the-real-olympic-champs-islands-business-16-august-2012/
Next Games
The next Commonwealth Games will be on the Gold Coast in Australia in 2018, which for Fiji should be far less costly to attend, than going to Scotland, the other side of the world.
Will Fiji athletes be allowed to attend? Probably yes.
Elections issue
Voters who are interested in the welfare of our sports and who would have been deeply upset at our exclusion from the last one in 2010, can ask the different political parties (including Fiji First party) how much they value Fiji’s participation in the Commonwealth Games, and being a full member of the Commonwealth.
* These are the views of Professor Wadan Narsey and not of The Fiji Times.
