Changing the games
Flag bearers at the opening ceremony for the 1938 commonwealth games.
Everyone’s favourite international sporting event. Every four years, the world’s greatest athletes come together to battle for gold. Countries are ruthless in their fight for who gets the chance to host. Dads worldwide stop replying to business emails.
It’s the Commonwealth Games. The eternal silver-medallist working overtime to compete with the lavish, captivating, ancient Olympics. They have fewer competing countries – just the Commonwealth of Nations – and unlike the Olympics, they rarely take place in the host nation’s largest city. Ōtautahi Christchurch hosted in 1974. Go figure.
Professor Greg Ryan, 56, is a Proctor and former Dean at Lincoln University, working in the Department of Tourism, Sport, and Society. He is the Managing Editor of The International Journal of the History of Sport.
He has fond memories of the 1974 Games, especially its offbeat track-and-field star. “I was about seven, but I do still remember the famous Dick Tayler doing the ten thousand metres at QEII. Partly because he looked a little bit unlike a natural, kind of distance athlete.”
The Games typically take place in smaller cities because there are fewer sports represented. More events means more stadiums, more facilities, more spectators. The Tokyo Olympics in 2021 had thirty-three sports, compared to just twenty for Birmingham’s Commonwealth Games the following year.
Those twenty have been far from consistent – selected sporting events change for each Commonwealth Games. Let’s take a tour through the long-time favourites, the rejects, and the one-off wildcards.
The Games have sixteen ‘core sports’ – not actually all that consistent, despite the name – and four ‘core para-sports’. Unlike the Paralympics, which are held separately from the Olympics, disabled athletes compete in the same Commonwealth Games as non-disabled athletes.
The only core sports to appear in every single Games since the very first in 1911 are Swimming, Boxing, and Athletics. Cycling has been permanent since 1938, and the same goes for Weightlifting since 1950. Ryan considers Athletics to be the consistent star sport of the Games. He says that to remove it, “you would be an absolute lunatic.”
1938 Commonwealth games opening ceremony.
And there’s another mainstay of the core programme which cements the Games’ reputation as an eccentric underdog: Lawn Bowls.
Athletes who compete in the Lawn Bowls event highly prize the Commonwealth Games, Ryan says. “If you’re a Lawn Bowler – okay, Bowls has an international championship of different sorts, but the Commonwealth Games is a biggie because you know you’re not gonna go to the Olympics.”
And then there are the ‘optional sports’, which are selected by the host nation. For the most part, the darlings have been Diving, Track Cycling, and Shooting. The latter had been included since 1974 but was removed from the 2022 programme, reportedly due to a lack of appropriate facilities. In response, India, who had been successful in prior Shooting events, threatened to boycott the 2022 Games in their entirety.
Strength of performance is a major factor in the selection process – in both directions. Ryan points to Fencing, featured from 1950 to 1970, as an example: “Say something like Fencing – is the Commonwealth particularly strong in Fencing? Well, probably not, it’s more of an Olympic sport because the power base kinda sits elsewhere.”
Some events appear sporadically according to preference and availability. A notable one is Judo, which pops up at seemingly random intervals, and Freestyle Wrestling, which no one can make their mind up about.
The catalogue of discontinued sports is a strange little graveyard. Synchronised Swimming took its last breath in 2010. Water Polo was only selected once, in 1950, and as just a singular event. Rowing was included periodically from the thirties to the sixties, with a brief comeback in ’86 before being completely booted. They tried Basketball twice. Ten-Pin Bowling once. Oh, and Greco-Roman Wrestling. All the super normal stuff.
There have also been ‘demonstration sports’, which promote less popular sports and do not factor into the main competitive programme. The 1998 Games, which took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were full of these: martial art forms Wushu, Silat, and Silambam, and Sepaktakraw, also known as kick volleyball.
Compared to the Olympics, twenty sports is a pretty small collection – but it’s about to get smaller. The Commonwealth Games Federation have advised that from the 2026 Games onward, only fifteen sports will be included. Just two, along with their para-equivalents, will be compulsory: Athletics and Swimming.
It’s up to the host nation to decide the rest, whether they’re chosen from the current list or not. This presents a major opportunity for host nations to promote sports that are specific to their history or culture. We might be seeing more Games like 1998 Malaysia.
But that’s only if they stick around. The 2026 Commonwealth Games were famously dropped by their Australian host state, Victoria, and are still shopping around for a home. Alberta, Canada even withdrew their bid for 2030.
The Games have two options. They can roll with the times: by redefining themselves as a loveable, affordable specialty event – even as a cultural showcase for underappreciated sport. Or they can keep trying to get bigger and better and more Olympics-y until only Ashburton wants to host. The ball is in their court.
