POSTED: August 10th 2010

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NEIL WILSON: Commonwealth chaos as Delhi dream turns into a nightmare

THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An exclusive, authoritative series from Sports Features Communications

LONDON, Aug 10: If India is serious about bidding for the summer Olympic Games of 2020, it will not  endure a worse month than August. Unless, of course, the  Commonwealth Games in Delhi in October proves as bad as its critics would have us believe.

Even the Queen, as head of the Commonwealth, was embroiled in the controversy with one British Sunday newspaper claiming that sources suggested she was in a “cold fury” over the latest claims of corruption around the Baton Relay she launched in London and which contains her message to the Games.

Little more than a month away now from the opening ceremony and nothing is going right for the first Commonwealth Games to be held in the sub-continent [October 3-14].

It was bad enough that the Commonwealth's few sporting super-stars - Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Sir Chris Hoy and Jessica Ennis - confirmed that they would not be coming but worse was that those who do may not find everything ready and waiting.

Major venues are unfinished, approach roads are said to be a mess of cables and gravel still and the metro linking the new airport to the city centre is not open.

Penultimate visit

Mike Fennell, president of the Commonwealth Games Federation, was noticeably nervous in his latest statement, saying that by the time he arrives for his penultimate visit on August 18 he expects a report that all regulatory approvals for fire, health and safety have been secured for each venue.

Throwing money at the project to catch up lost time has blown the budget to pieces. The original budget was £500m. None of the recent reports put the cost at less than £2bn. Some claim it is closer to £4bn and sponsorship intended to pay for some of it has not materialised as expected. One Indian sponsor withheld its payment this month.

But it is the bitterness surrounding the organisation that will have soured India's hopes of a successful bid for 2020.

Hardly a week passes without somebody in authority calling for the resignation of it chairman, Sujresh Kalmadi. Only last week two of his most senior officials, the director general of finance and the joint director of the organising committee, were suspended while Indian authorities launched an investigation into aspects of the financing.

Contract claims

They were alerted by British tax authorities about payments to a British company with which no apparent contract existed in spite of allegations that £250,000 had been paid to it. That news came only days after the sacking of an Australian company responsible for sponsorship amid claims that it was demanding 23pc even of deals to which it had not been party.

No doubt the Games will start on time. They always do. The paint may still be wet, signage still missing and the tarmacadam on the road linking the athletes' village to the stadium still soft. But when the Games begin in the Queen's absence - the first time she has missed a Commonwealth Games in more than 40 years - the build-up will have persuaded the world that the India of old is unchanged..

And that is not the message that even the original budget for these Games was intended to convey to the world.

NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books.

Keywords · Neil Wilson · Delhi · India · Commonwealth Games

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