Tym Glaser, Associate Editor Sport
IT'S NOWHERE near as grand as the Olympics; not anywhere close. In fact, to the uninitiated (or those outside our realm) it's at worst 'weird' or at best 'quaint'.
The likes of lawn bowls, squash, badminton and field hockey are hardly likely to capture worldwide audiences but, who cares? They are our games at our special Games.
The Commonwealth Games are under way in Melbourne now amid little hype and fanfare and that's just they way we like it.
You can have your over-bloated Olympics and World Cups and all the 'World' Series and 'World' Championships Uncle Sam can handle, we of the Commonwealth like our Games just fine, thank you.
For 11 days, 71 of the most disparate nations on the planet have come together for a sports fest. The common bond is that, in one way, shape or form, they are part of what used to be known as the British Empire; the once world power upon which the sun never set but now just seems archaic.
We are tied together as a band not because of British benevolence, but the nastier stuff like greed which begat the likes of harsh conquest and occupation and slavery and mass deportation.
Still, we can't sulk over the past and we don't have to. When we see our stars on the track, or in the pool, or, yes, even on a lawn bowls' green, we can say to maternal Great Britain and the rest of the world, see how far we've come?
Of course, 'wealth' is not 'common' in our fraternity, but that's an ongoing saga for another time and place.
Over the next week and a bit we can just enjoy sport in our own little world community. Not many world records will tumble but this is not for the world or about the world.
The days of the British Empire are over, but the sons and daughters it spawned are going strong. Want proof? See Melbourne.
Facts
THE FIRST Games, in Ontario, Canada, boasted a grand total of 400 athletes from a whopping 11 countries.
SIX COUNTRIES have been to every instalment of the Games England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Scottland and Wales.
JAMAICA ATTENDED its first Games in London in 1934 and then did not return for 20 years (Vancouver, 1954).
JAMAICA WON two medals in 1934 a silver and bronze in the famous island sports of discus and 200-yard breaststroke. Bernard Prendergast claimed bronze in the tossing event with a hurl of 132 feet (40.23 metres) while W.A. McCatty was runner-up in the pool with a time of 2.42.4.
WHAT'S IN a name? The event was called the British Empire Games, the British Empire and Commonwealth Games and the British Commonwealth Games before finally, we hope, settling on the simple Commonwealth Games.
FOR THE first 20 years, the parade of nations was led in by a single flagbearer carrying the Union Jack.
THE QUEEN'S baton first left Buckingham Palace in 1958 headed all the way to Cardiff.
THE IDEA for a 'Commonwealth Games' was first touted in 1891 in the Times of London when Reverend Astley Cooper suggested "a Pan-Britannic-Pan-Anglican Contest and Festival every four years as a means of increasing goodwill and good understanding of the British Empire".
EVENTS ARE not dumped or dropped from the Commonwealth Games, they are merely on 'hiatus'. Such resting sports include archery, cricket, fencing, freestyle wrestling, judo, rowing and ten-pin bowling.
THE FOUR constituent countries of the United Kingdom England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland send separate teams to the Commonwealth Games but a united team to the Olympics.
PARTICIPANT-WISE, the Games are the second largest sporting event behind the Olympics. An average Commonwealth get-together features about 5,000 athletes.
SOMETIMES NOT everybody wants to come to the party. Nigeria boycotted the 1978 Games in Edmonton due to New Zealand's sporting contacts with apartheid South Africa and 32 of 59 countries from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean did the same to the 1986 Games in Edinburgh over England's attitude to sport and the southern African nation.
THE NEXT Commonwealth Games, in 2010, will be held in Delhi, India.
THE 2014 Games bid cities include Abuja, Nigeria, Glasgow, Scotland, Halifax, Canada and Windhoek, Namibia.
LONDON, SYDNEY and Melbourne are the only cities to have hosted Commonwealth and Olympic Games.
THE GAMES' core sports are athletics, aquatics, lawn bowls, netball and rugby sevens. They are safe until at least 2014 and probably forever.
THERE ARE 71 Commonwealth nations competing in Melbourne and about 4,500 athletes.
BILLIARDS AND sailing are on the 'approved list' of sports for the Games but are yet to make an appearance.
THE GREAT Kenyan Kip Keino is the only athlete to currently hold two Commonwealth records for the men's mile and three miles events. He should hold them forever as they are no longer part of the track programme. Both were set here in 1966.
