Wales’ Commonwealth Games hopes ‘dashed by underinvestment’
Chris Haines, ICNN Senedd reporter
The dream of hosting another Commonwealth Games on Welsh soil is currently impossible due to decades of underinvestment in Wales’ sporting facilities, a committee has heard.
Sport Wales chair Tanni Grey-Thompson said: “It’s important we have events in Wales. Sadly, I don’t think we could ever probably host the Commonwealth Games.”
Pressed about why, Baroness Grey-Thompson pointed to the lack of a suitable athletics stadium but said Wales could host parts of the Games with a pool and velodrome.
“It would be amazing to have a Commonwealth Games on home soil,” she said. “But that’s a longer term set of decisions and strategy. It’s about having the infrastructure and legacy.”
Citing “decades of underinvestment”, Labour’s Alun Davies asked: “Don’t you think it’s quite a commentary on the state of Welsh sporting facilities that… we don’t have the facilities to host the Commonwealth Games?”
Baroness Grey-Thompson concluded: “It comes down to money.”
‘Miracle drug’
Baroness Grey-Thompson appeared before the Welsh Parliament’s culture and sport committee for annual scrutiny on September 25.
Delyth Jewell, who chairs the committee, asked about the potential impact of the Welsh Government’s planned “business-as-usual” budget which will rise in line with inflation.
Baroness Grey-Thompson said: “We do recognise that it’s a really tough time financially… and the committee’s own analysis of the sport sector shows that it’s funded lower than other comparable European nations.”
She stressed the value of sport and physical activity to Welsh society, referring to comments from the chief medical officer who described sport as a “miracle drug”.
The Paralympian told Senedd members: “We understand you’ve got to spread the money a long way but we’re really ambitious… not necessarily money going into Sport Wales but going into physical activity in the wider sector.
‘Wow’
“There would be an impact in terms of the scale of our ambition.”
She told the committee Sport Wales needs about £20m a year to catch up with other home nation sports councils and £200m to be in line with the average of other European countries.
“Wow,” Mr Davies exclaimed in response to the figure.
Baroness Grey-Thompson, who called for multi-year settlements for day-to-day revenue and longer-term capital funding, said “I think with what we have, we’re pretty efficient.”
She recognised that £200m is a “long way off” what Sport Wales can reasonably expect.
Graham Williams, director at Sport Wales, described plans for a “flat-line” budget as a missed opportunity, particularly to invest in changing young people’s activity patterns.
‘Panic budgeting’
Mr Williams reminded Senedd members that Sport Wales – which funds partners including governing bodies – received a “challenging” 10.5% cut in 2024/25, equivalent to £2.4m.
Mr Davies, a former minister, said: “It feels to me like unplanned, almost panic budgeting as you’d find in some sort of financial crisis – it takes me back to 2010.”
Baroness Grey-Thompson replied: “It wasn’t an easy time for anyone,” but she welcomed transparency from the Welsh Government which aided Sport Wales’ planning.
Wales ranked third from bottom of European countries in terms of spending for each person on recreational and sporting services, according to a culture committee report.
The country was languishing second from bottom in the league table for cultural services in January’s report which warned of the impact of a decade of cuts.
Cardiff hosted the then-British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1958 – one of the biggest sporting events ever held in Wales at the time.
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The Commonwealth Games was a rebranding of the Empire Games, celebrating the fact that over 200 countries around the world were colonised. Fortunately the event is becoming increasingly irrelevant at a time when we need to focus finance on simply allowing youngster to participate in sport.
You can’t get away from the history of the British Empire, and there’s obviously a strong argument to be made in focusing what available money there is on allowing youngsters (and olders) to participate in sport, but dismissal of the Commonwealth Games the only large multisport event in which Wales competes in its own right, only diminishes Wales’ place on the world stage (even in a limited member event) and ultimately denies Wales’ best athletes the chance to represent Wales.
I’ll far rather see money spent on useful facilities across Wales than an athletics stadium for 20000 plus people which gets used occasionally. The ‘new’ tracks at sketty and leckwith seem to have been a massive success. Loads of great young athletes coming out of the those two clubs. A rolling improvement scheme at other athletics facilities would be great, deesise and Wrexham could do with some cash being spent.
Seeing Wales last held the Commonwealth Games during the Bronze Age, where the premier sport of the day was spearing Mammoth, it was the one and only time Cardiff secured a bag of sand from Westminster to use for the short jump as we couldn’t afford the long jump due to lack of money. But yet again another large-scale event evades Wales like HS2 consequential due to underinvestment in facilities by Welsh Labour and numerous Conservative & Labour UK Governments. I always assumed London 2012 was suppose to leave a sporting legacy in Wales. Well that’s what we were led… Read more »
The Commonwealth Games is yesterday’s news. Already struggling to find hosts, it has little purchase as a sporting event to promote Wales. The Champions league final was a much better investment and Test cricket perhaps. Let’s move on.