2131

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday February 22, 2020

Déjà vu: Commonwealth Games bid feels awfully familiar

There were two significant obstacles standing in Hamilton’s way back in 2002 when the city was lobbying to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games — New Delhi was pushing hard to get the event and Vancouver was in full-court-press mode for the Winter Olympics.

The former was a problem because the Commonwealth Games had never been held in India while Canada had hosted four times. The latter was an issue, many experts said, because two multi-sport Games wouldn’t be given to the same country in the same year. The Commonwealth variety would be massively overshadowed by the Olympics.

Whether these folks were prescient or simply guessed well, they turned out to be correct. Vancouver won the right to host the Olympics and Commonwealth voters awarded their Games to India shortly thereafter.

Fast forward 18 years.

An organizing group called Hamilton100 is now pushing forward with a pitch to host the 2030 Games on the one-century anniversary of our hosting the British Empire Games, the precursor to the modern Commonwealth Games. Meanwhile, in a crazy twist, New Delhi says it’s interested in hosting again that year (or 2026). And the guy who ran Vancouver’s wildly successful Olympics told that city’s Board of Trade on Thursday that it should launch a bid to host again in 2030 since it already has most of the infrastructure in place.

In a flash, 2020 has become 2002 all over again.

Sort of. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)