Commonwealth Games

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has cancelled the upcoming Commonwealth Games!! Say it ain’t so!!

Personally I think it’s approaching obscene to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on a glorified sports carnival when the country’s in the grips of both a housing and cost of living crisis, but many people have a weird and unhealthy obsession with sports and are likely now losing their minds. They’re probably already tweeting (and/or threading) up a storm about how people need sports to make their miserable lives bearable, an argument with a real panem et circenses feel to it. Gotta keep those proles entertained!

The only reason people like the Commonwealth Games anyway is because Australians are the only people in the Commonwealth who can actually swim. Our swimmers reliably bring home a massive pile of medals and everyone cheers about how we slaughtered Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Then at the Olympics everyone is baffled when our world-beating team picks up maybe two golds and three or four silvers. Questions are asked about how our performance could have collapsed so far in only two years, completely ignoring the fact that the Americans preemptively quit the Commonwealth back in 1776.

Screw the games. Well done Dan!

Ah yes, the Commonwealth Games are on. This means I’ve had to totally rearrange my TV viewing since Channel 10 has dumped its regular schedule in favour of broadcasting the competition around the clock (do something else instead of watching TV? Are you mad?:))

I really find it hard to get excited about the Commonwealth Games. They’re really nothing more than a second rate Olympics with all of the serious competition removed. In several areas (the swimming in particular) Australia simply has the best athletes in the Commonwealth, which makes picking up medals akin to shooting fish in a barrel. What’s our tally so far? Nine gold, ten silver, five bronze, for a total of twenty four – putting us at the top of the medal count and thirteen ahead of current second placers India.

This sounds impressive, but with the big boys missing it’s all really kind of pointless. It even approaches embarrassing, particularly when the media try to get everyone all revved up about it. “Gold for Australia! Gold for Australia!” has a kind of hollow ring when there are no Americans, Russians or Chinese in the competition. Without meaning to put down our fellow Commonwealth members, it’s like wining a foot race against a bunch of amputees – crowing about it just comes across as pathetic.

So yeah, the Commonwealth Games. Is it the closing ceremony yet?

Tag: Commonwealth Games

Not the Games!!

Shooting Fish