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Date With Destiny Dawns In Delhi
Oct 3, 2010 - Craig Lord
As far as first impressions counting, New Delhi did extremely well: a smooth arrivals process at the new, gleaming Indira Ghandi airport, from plane to accreditation in 5 minutes, at the hotel within the hour, a stream of smiling faces and welcoming words from volunteers and locals lining the way. Alongside the good humour was the serious face of India: armed police, scrutinising, scowling. Not an easy life one spent in a bullet-proof vest, particularly by the side of the dusty, traffic choked road on a humid day as mid-morning temperatures challenged 35C.
If the welcome was heartening, then the cityscape was as thrilling, depressing, chaotic, ramshackle, fascinating and filthy as you might expect of a passage to India as the country cranks up in the most 11th of 11th hours for its first major sporting Games. If some sights set the spirits soaring, others confirm the tourist slogan for this vast nation: incredible, sometimes to be interpreted as unbelievable.
Wayne Smith of The Australian wrote along the lines that the crew of the Starship Enterprise being beamed up from the hostility of an alien hell had surely paved the way for journalists walking the 1km from a bustling main road to the pristine main press centre, past shanty, rubbish dumps, collapsing concrete structures, flea-bitten dogs and a military rocket or two (don't ask, I have no idea why they were there, staged in a car park as museum pieces rather than active arms). Mad Max X with a bite, you might say. The colliding contrast between worlds here is as surreal as many of its people are warm and welcoming.
The haven of the press centre brought little peace of mind. Four options for internet were offered. Three failed, the one that is working may not be available at the pool tomorrow. Wifi may or may not work. No-one has yet managed to get the blue web dongles being handed out to actually work. The pool venue is fabulous. The electronic timing at the pool is not up and running earlier today before opening ceremony lockdown. It is 7pm here. Heats beckon in a little over 12 hours. The results system may not be quite 'live', many computers throughout the Games yet to be loaded with the necessary pdf kit. 'All will be fine', is heard on the breeze. That view is not quite akin to a mountaineer peering from the crest of Everest through a blizzard and opining enthusiastically 'soon be down', but you get my drift.
No start sheets yet. No sign that any are in the offing any time soon. In a few hours, India will face its first big test: the Opening Ceremony. The moment has come when all will be well must be converted to all is well. Time is up. A golden sun sets on the horizon of this sprawling but verdant urban jungle. Tomorrow we will know if Delhi has pulled it off. If it relied on the will, politeness and pleasantness, it would be a case of job very well done. Of course, the sports show must also be world-class, and that means more than the performances of the athletes themselves.
Hope rests in the tankers that have been turned around. The chaos of an unfinished and 'filthy' Athletes' Village was scrubbed and cleaned into history, with Rebecca Adlington, England's double Olympic champion, among those saying such things as: "The village - I don't see the problems. I think it's really nice. The room I got is bigger than the room we got in Beijing. No complaints from me."
She leads England's campaign tomorrow in the 200m free, the weakest of her three solo races, but one in which she receives a billboard back home in the media of "England Expects". Adlington has fretted much about expectation of late, and then delivered gold in the 400m free at the European Championships a few days after fatigue contributed to a solid training effort not a title chase over 800m. She and her teammates aim to set St George and his cross fluttering on the breeze, while and no-one to be found alive looking through green and gold-tinted spectacles will have any of it on sound technical grounds according to the definition of "Commonwealth", the invisible force up against the Dolphins here is the temporarily divided union otherwise known as Britain.
The stats confirm the shift in the seascape: in the 1990s the Dolphins raced a pool apart from rivals, with 71 per cent of all gold and 52 per cent of all Commonwealth Games medals going Down Under. The combined Britain tally, the lion's share of it down to England: 12 per cent of gold and 19% of all medals. No contest. Ten years on, beyond the revolution of Australian coach Bill Sweetenham and in London 2012 countdown mode with American Denis Pursley and Australian Michael Scott filling Sweetenham's boots and a team of confident coaches and swimmers on the up, and the gulf between Aussies and the old empire has closed considerably: in the past decade, Australia took 55 per cent of Commonwealth gold, compared to 31% for British swimmers, and 40 per cent of all medals, compared to 30 per cent for the Brits.
Yes, we know: they are not here as Brits - but try telling them that. Pursley and Scott are are the helm of a team of three home nations that moved in numbers, shared a camp in Doha, behaves in almost every way as if they are one. And they are, London 2012 the point of making Delhi 2010 the priority event of the year. In Commonwealth terms, Britain does not exist, in swimming terms, with a home Games on the horizon, nothing but Britain matters. In England terms, all but a few of the Brits ranked among the best 3 in the Commonwealth this year will race for England.
Adlington, Joanne Jackson, Jazz Carlin (WAL), Gemma Spofforth, Lizzie Simmonds, Hannah Miley (SCO) and Liam Tancock are among those capable of cracking Aussie might but few if any expect this meet to end in any other way than it has ended every time since 1982: with the Dolphins on top. Hard to see England slipping from silver, while Canada is looking to improve after serious setbacks in the past decade that saw a nation once capable of beating Australia 6th (behind South Africa, Scotland and Kirsty Coventry's Zimbabwean success story) and 5th (behind Scotland and South Africa) on the medals table respectively in 2002 and 2006.
All teams have an abundance of 'rookies', though at Commonwealth level the significance of that, with three per nation in each event, is questionable. Take Adlington, an Olympic and European champion and world medallist before earning Commonwealth selection - courtesy of illness last time round. Fran Halsall was the baby of the England team last time but in Budapest at Europeans won a British record five medals at one championships a year after taking silver at world titles in Rome over 100m freestyle.
Then there were shiny suits. Now there are none - and the theme is hardly relevant in Commonwealth terms, non-textile booster suits not yet a twinkle in Speedo's eye back in 2006. If all of that has come and gone, Halsall has come of age. "There wasn’t any expectation on me for those Games," she said. "I went to experience them. I’ve got different emotions now. I’m not really as excited as I was before Melbourne. This time I’ve got experience and I’ve got a load of events and hopefully I can get the results I want in them."
Florida-based Spofforth shared her optimism. “We’ve got a really strong team. All the relays are looking medal prospects. I think we can get a lot of medals between us."
Australia-based England head coach Chris Nesbit said the team had not been specifically talking in terms of medals, but added that he was aiming to at least match the number of medals won in Melbourne four years ago (8 gold, 11 silver and 4 bronze) - with a view to London 2012.
For world 50m backstroke champion Liam Tancock, one of those who produced Loughborough coach Ben Titley's medals bonanza in Budapest, Delhi is a chance to "catch-up" with Camille Lacourt. The Frenchman missed Tancock's 24.04sec world 50m mark by 0.03sec when racing in textile jammers in July. relative to the suits worn, Lacourt had made a massive gain, one that "serves as a challenge to all of us ... he's set the new standard and that's what I'll be aspiring to," said Tancock. Of England, he will also cheer on the Scots, girlfriend Caitlin McClatchey here to defend her 200m and 400m freestyle crowns.
For Canada, the splendid competition venue only served to build on their growing enthusiasm for the meet. “I think this venue is really great. It’s really bright in here and it has a good feel to it. It feels fast,” said Julia Wilkinson, up in the 200m medley tomorrow. There awaiting her will be Scotland's Hannah Miley, European 400m champion, and Emily Seebohm, a Dolphin and the only women in the world to have cracked 2mins 10 this year, with the world mark out there at 2:06.15.
As the week progresses, Seebohm, at the helm of the nation to beat, could emerge as the star of the women's event, challenging two other European champions from Britain, Spofforth and Simmonds, who claimed gold and silver in the continental 100m and 200m backstroke clashes in Budapest in July, Spofforth taking the sprint, Simmonds the four-length final.
Libby Trickett and Stephanie Rice are missing but Seebohm's teammates remain the strongest female force going into the meet here. Jessica Schipper on 'fly, teenage bolter Yolane Kukla on sprint free, and Bronte Barratt, Katie Goldman and Blair Evans on longer free events are also among those who will challenge for titles. Then there's Leisel Jones, with seven Commonwealth Games golds under her belt and now with four targets in Delhi up for surpassing Susie O'Neill and Ian Thorpe as the most prolific winner of Commonwealth titles in Australian history.
"My dream is winning every event," Jones, 25, told reporters. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?" Thorpe and O'Neill have 10, but Jones is favourite in the 50m, 100m 200m breaststroke and Australia favourites in the 4x100m medley in Delhi. Among those aiming to stop her will be world record holder Annamay Pierse in the 200m breaststroke.
Among men, Australia hope to fair better than last time round, when the sole gold medal was won in a relay in the last session of a meet that stood out in stark contrast to squads led by giants Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett.
Top of the heap are breaststroke aces Brenton Rickard and Christian Sprenger, both world record holders from shiny 2009, while comeback kind Geoff Huegill is gunning for gold eight years after winning the 50 'fly crown in Manchester.
Olympic silver medallist and 2008 world record setter Eamon Sullivan (AUS) faces 2007 world champion Brent Hayden (CAN) in a 100m free showdown. Said Hayden: "I’m here to swim fast and win. The pool here is phenomenal. I think India is going to be putting on an excellent games."
He and Pierse are joined by Ryan Cochrane as Canada's main hopes. Cochrane could do the distance double, over 400m and 1,500m. In both he faces defending 1,500m champion David Davies (WAL), who, in the midst of a year of transition, is something of a dark horse in Delhi and was to be found as the proud bearer of the Welsh flag at the opening ceremony this evening.
For both men, London 2012 is what it is all about, Cochrane saying: "After the Commonwealth Games are done, all we really have is one world championships and then the Olympics ... which is a little stressful to talk about. It's a short two years. I mean, I look back over the last two years and it's hard to believe it's 24 months (since Beijing). I think the Commonwealth Games is a great experience for people who haven't actually been to a village. When I was in Beijing, the village wasn't overwhelming and it wasn't so exciting that I lost track of what I was there to do. That was because I had the experience in Melbourne (2006 Commonwealth Games) two years before."
He extended his own excellence to his team, saying: "They're having the idea and the imagination to be the best in the world. We're not talking about all the little things anymore. It's great. It's really exciting to be a part of that." Wilkinson, encapsulates that thought. She raced in six events at her first Olympics in Beijing - and emerged physically and mentally exhausted. Then came surgery to repair a torn labrum in her right shoulder and a year of recovery and rehabilitation.
"I exhausted myself at the Olympics because I wanted a chance to do everything," Wilkinson told reporters. "It got to the point where you have to say, `Okay, do I want to be seventh in four things, or do I want to win one medal?' I would much rather come home with a medal than say I swam this, this, this and this, but I didn't make it to the podium."
Canada won 16 medals, just one gold among them, in 2006. "We're nowhere near ready to win in the pool at the Commonwealth Games in 2014, but we're chipping away at it way quicker than everybody else is," noted Pierre Lafontaine, Swimming Canada's CEO and national coach. All such thoughts are relative to the depths to which nations sometimes descend.
Delhi will sort out a new order for Commonwealth swimming, with South Africa and New Zealand seeking to find a place among the bigger fish ahead of them right now.
The Top Three in The Commonwealth So Far This Year
