Commonwealth Games Delhi India 2010 Commonwealth Games India

Olympic champion Victoria Pendleton has told BBC Sport she will miss the Commonwealth Games in Delhi to focus on October's European Championships.

The 29-year-old's decision mirrors Sir Chris Hoy, who pulled out of the 2010 Games on Friday because of the clash.

The European event will count as a qualifier for the 2012 Olympics and Beijing sprint gold medallist Pendleton said London remains her main focus.

"It's a no-brainer, points for Olympics qualification are on offer," she added.

"Unfortunately you are not going to jeopardise going to the London Olympics, so we have to go to the Europeans.

"It's really unfortunate we can't do both competitions and support the Commonwealth Games."

We have been put in a situation where the European Championships clash and we can't ignore an opportunity to gain points for the Olympics

Victoria Pendleton

And British cycling chief Dave Brailsford believes other cyclists will continue to prioritise those events offering qualification points for the Olympic Games.

"Those who have clear Olympic ambitions have to prioritise: is it the Commonwealth Games or is it Olympic points and those who want to compete in the home Games in London will 100% go for the Olympic points," he told BBC 5 Live.

"Their thinking is that they would like to get as many points on the board as early as possible. They don't want to end up running into the 2012 Games looking at preparation periods being compromised by having to chase points to qualify.

"It's a very tough decision but ultimately they have gone for the Olympic qualification points considering that is what their careers are based around."

The first senior European Championships - an event formerly restricted to riders under the age of 23 - takes place from 5-7 November.

Pendleton disappointed to miss Commonwealths

However, the competition has suddenly become more significant for Britain's top riders because of the changes agreed by the International Cycling Union (UCI), with results counting towards qualification for London 2012.

The quest for an Olympic place began after March's World Championships in Copenhagen and will run until the Track World Championships in Melbourne in 2012.

Four-time Olympic champion Hoy said the Olympics must "take precedence over everything" following Friday's decision to withdraw from the Commonwealth Games.

And Pendleton, the defending sprint champion having won gold at Melbourne in 2006, said she had little choice but to miss the Delhi Games.

"The Commonwealths have been a really important competition in the schedule just one below the Olympics," stated Pendleton.

"But if you can't qualify for the Olympics, then it puts us in an awful situation.

606: DEBATE
The Commonwealth Games is a nice event, but lets be honest it is to the Olympics what the Champions League is to the Europa League in football

Sgyrsiau Sbwriel

"I'm really disappointed that I can't support India in their Games as it's somewhere I really want to visit.

"But we have been put in a situation where the European Championships clash and we can't ignore an opportunity to gain points for the Olympics."

A venue for the European championships has yet to be confirmed but the competition will limit the number of riders to one from each country per event, along with the number of European teams allowed to race in the team sprint.

Pendleton compared the changes - which will be in place for London 2012 - with Jamaica choosing between sprinters Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell for their athletics team.

source >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/cycling/8835499.stm

An estimated 140,000 families will be evicted to clear space for lavish facilities in Delhi that offer no lasting benefits

As we await the start of another great carnival of sport, uneasily suppressing our reservations about the possible benefits – or the lack thereof – to the great majority of the South African people from the 2010 World Cup, news arrives of a disturbing report into the next such event, also taking place in a corner of the former British Empire where the desperately poor vastly outnumber even the modestly affluent.

The Commonwealth Games, which begin in Delhi on 3 October, are already surrounded by concerns over security. Far more worrying than the possible threat to a few thousand privileged visiting foreigners, however, is a new report by the Housing and Land Network, an arm of the global movement Habitat International Coalition, suggesting that by the time the Games begin about 140,000 families will have been evicted from their homes to clear the space for the lavish facilities now compulsory for such events.

For 100,000 of those families, it is already too late. They have been moved out of their shanty towns and "resettled", a word which has a deceptively comforting sound. Usually the policy's victims find themselves relocated to distant places where the prospects of work are even more remote and there are no schools for their children. It is anticipated that a further 40,000 families will soon share this experience in order to allow athletes to demonstrate their prowess and commercial sponsors to advertise their wares to a worldwide audience.

Miloon Kothari, a former United Nations human rights expert, wrote the report and also discovered that "tens of millions of dollars" originally intended to fight poverty in Delhi have instead been used to fund the Games, whose budget is now around 20 times its original estimate, making the fourfold rise in the London 2012 budget seem almost like good housekeeping.

Back in January it was suggested by Kothari that the Indian government needed to be held accountable for "persistent human rights violations against the homeless" and "a clear violation of [its] commitments under constitutional and international law" to provide for its poor. Now the opportunity to present Delhi as a "world city" and to make money for those with their fingers in the pie appears to be taking precedence over such commitments, as it seems to have done in South Africa, where the "people's game" will be out of the reach of all but a tiny minority of the actual people.

Corruption and the immoral misallocation of resources are more easily spotted in developing countries, partly because that is what we expect to find. In the developed world we are less blatant in our venality – not least because of our inquisitive media. When we pander to sponsors' needs, whether they be soft-drinks manufacturers or television networks, the collateral damage is less obvious. But it is still present in the skewing of priorities and the tacit expectation that a good party will make people forget the problems undermining their society, such as the ever-widening gap between rich and poor.

Those making the decision to hand a sporting event of global significance to a developing nation are not always entirely devoid of decent motives. But the downside, for the voiceless majority, is too great to be tolerated. The XIX Commonwealth Games will not significantly advance Delhi's progress towards membership of an international community. Instead it will increase the prosperity of a handful of globalised "partners", make a few already prosperous people even richer, and leave behind a few very costly facilities for elite sport, to be stared at by those whose homes and lives were destroyed to make it all possible.

Perhaps the time has come to stand back and think about where the recent explosion in festivals of sport has led us. Given that a decision to restrict the hosting of all such events to countries with existing facilities would be unacceptably discriminatory, a 20-year moratorium on all such events, until the world sorts out its finances and its priorities, might not be such a bad idea.
Holding fast to a uniquely pleasing rhythm

It was my good fortune to see Anderson Roberts and Michael Holding bowl in tandem in the 1970s but an abiding memory comes from an afternoon several years after their retirement, when they strode together into the pavilion of Melbourne Cricket Club in Kingston, Holding's home club, still enveloped in the sort of aura with which they struck fear into batsmen's hearts. It was like watching Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday entering a Tombstone bar, or Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker walking into a 52nd Street club.

Fast bowlers are quite a lot like jazz musicians. They all do the same thing, more or less, but each one has his own signature, immediately recognisable from beyond the boundary, created by the combination of physique, run-up, delivery and follow-through. An assertion that Holding was the greatest of all would draw fire from admirers of Harold Larwood, Dennis Lillee and others but he was without question the most aesthetically pleasing.

Fast bowlers' autobiographies seldom amount to much but No Holding Back, the great Jamaican's new effort, published this week, is substantial enough to remind us that he has also become one of the game's better television commentators. He is modest enough not to mention the bass-heavy 1976 reggae classic in which Prince Far I celebrated "the 'eavy, 'eavy bowlin' of a man called Michael Holding". If it's not in your collection, hear it on YouTube.
Diarra's drive to succeed ends in disappointment

Spare a thought for Lassana Diarra, who moved from Arsenal to Portsmouth looking for the first-team exposure that would secure him a place in his country's World Cup squad. A courageous decision worked out so well that Diarra won not only the approval of the eccentric Raymond Domenech but a big move to Real Madrid. At the weekend, however, the news emerged from France's training camp that a genetic disorder of the red blood cells, causing chronic fatigue, will prevent his participation in South Africa.

source >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/may/25/commonwealth-games-delhi

New Delhi, July 18(ANI): Union Sports and Youth Affairs Minister M. S. Gill on Sunday inaugurated the ‘remodelled and reconstructed’ Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Swimming Pool Complex, one of the venues for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, at the Delhi University campus.

The function was held in the presence of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, Commonwealth Games Organising Committee Chairman Suresh Kalmadi, several sports persons and senior Sports Ministry officials.

“This is an outstanding complex and a remarkable engineering marvel. It is equipped with all the modern facilities even better than the Melbourne Games,” Gill said.

The complex, which was constructed in 1982 to hold the Asian Games, has been upgraded and renovated with state of art facilities to meet the international standards required for hosting world-class aquatic events.

With a total seating capacity of 5000 spectators, the complex now has the largest cohestrand supported, breathable and elliptical shaped aluminum roof.

It is the largest covered aquatic stadium in the country having Olympic-sized racing and diving pools with a six lanes warm up pool.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Sprint superstar Usain Bolt will miss this year’s Commonwealth Games in India, his coach Glen Mills has confirmed.

Organisers were hoping the World record holder in the 100 and 200 metres would show up for the October 3-14 Games scheduled for Delhi, but the latest announcement is sure to be a huge blow.

“Bolt made it known long ago that he is not going to the Commonwealth Games,” Mills said.

Bolt’s absence is expected to allow him to continue his preparation for the London 2012 Olympics where he will defend his sprint titles in the 100 and 200 metres.

Before that, the 23-year-old will also defend both sprint titles at next year’s World Championship in Daegu, South Korea.

It will be the second successive time Bolt has missed the Commonwealth Games after pulling out of the 2006 edition in Melbourne because of injury.

He will also be a no-show at the Jamaica National Championships next weekend, another meet Mills said the Jamaican was never carded to attend.

“He was never down to run at trials,” Mills said.

Bolt is currently on the mend from an Achilles tendon injury which forced him out of the last IAAF Diamond League event in New York.

He has already shown glimpses of his ominous form this year, posting 19.56 seconds in the 200 metres in Jamaica g earlier this month before returning to run 9.86 seconds in the 100 metres in Daegu.

source>> http://www.stabroeknews.com/2010/sports/06/21/commonwealth-games-to-do-without-world%E2%80%99s-fastest-man/