It’s the question still hanging over Brisbane’s 2032 Olympics, which made Victoria cancel its Commonwealth Games: do such mega events pay their own way? The evidence suggests they’re unlikely to.
There will likely be a settlement between Victoria and the games organisers for breaching the contract. But the Commonwealth Games may be the ones to suffer long-term reputational damage.
Hosting the Games has seem Birmingham dotted with new infrastructure and amenities. But the city’s pioneering transformation began over a 100 years ago.
Maria Lyle of Scotland, Isis Holt and Brianna Coop of Australia after the womens T35 100m
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Since the second world war nearly every Olympic Games has seen athletes seeking asylum in the Games host country.
The familiar images of high-rise development, looking north here from Surfers Paradise, tell only one part of the story of the Gold Coast.
Andrew Leach
Behind the built-up glitz of Surfers Paradise lies a deep history that has been written and overwritten in successive layers that have become thinner and thinner as time goes on.
Not so “ladylike” – the netball rivalry between Australian and New Zealand will continue at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Ross Setford/AAP
Commonwealth Games netball is an intensely physical and competitive affair. It’s a far cry from netball’s roots – the game was designed to shape women into model middle-class citizens.
Fireworks go off at the opening ceremonies for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
The Commonwealth Games do not get the same level of media coverage as the Olympics. But a one-time Commonwealth gold medallist says the Games are still an important athletic competition.
The Commonwealth Games is often dubbed the ‘friendly games’, but its history shows that friendliness applies only to ‘the right sort of people’.
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Preparations for next month’s Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast are pushing homeless people out of town, and out of the state. Sadly, that’s not unusual for events of this sort.
The Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast will set the scene for a year of challenges for this grouping of nations.
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We are so accustomed to hearing about American exceptionalism that British exceptionalism is rarely discussed.
Local residents holding Chinese and Olympic flags attend a rehearsal in Chongli county of Zhangjiakou ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Reuters/Jason Lee
Sporting extravaganzas are a way for globalising cities in emerging market economies to try and play the “modernity game”. But they don’t make the rules, and so they can never “win”.
The Gold Coast is preparing to host the 2018 edition of the Commonwealth Games.
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