21st Commonwealth Games started on April 4th yesterday and will go on till April 15th at Goldcoast,Australia in which 71 nations have taken part this year,who were all once members of the British Colony.Apart from a one off incident of corruption in 2010 games,the Commonwealth Games have always been worth cherishing and reminiscing for Indians as athletes from different sports disciplines have always made the nation proud by gracing podium during presentation ceremony and have culminated each edition of games with improved standings in the medal tally.
Commonwealth games governing bodies,in order to ensure efficient enforcement of women’s equality with men,has announced on 7th October 2016 that seven new events for women were added to the sports program which has now led to equal number of events for men and women and this reform encompasses the reintroduction of Basketball,the debut of Women’s Rugby Sevens and Beach Volleyball.In total 275 events in 18 sports will be contested this year.Another major change this year was the fact that Maldives which was scheduled to participate in the games,withdrew from the commonwealth in October 2016.The Gambia will return to the event this year after being readmitted as Commonwealth Games Federation Member on 31st March 2018.
Talking about the Indian contingent which consists of 218 members has names of veteran olympians like Sushil Kumar in wrestling,Gagan Narang in Shooting and Marykom in Boxing and also some freshly brewed talents like Manu Bhaker in Shooting, K.Srikanth and Rio Olympics bronze medalist Sakshi Malik in wrestling and silver medalist P.V. Sindhu who was also the flag bearer of Indian contingent during the opening ceremony of games.
This time the event has already been in headlines even before its commencement as the Indian Olympics Association (IOA) has cut names of parents of ace badminton players Saina Nehwal and P.V. Sindhu from the list of officials who were going to enter game’s village at government cost and this whole matter took a serious turn when Saina Nehwal used Twitter to express her outrage against authorities but later on her father was allowed to enter as the star player threatened to pull out of the games.
By the way,India has already won two medals today.The two medals came from Mirabai Chanu (Gold) and P Gururaja (Silver).Congrats to all the Indians out there!
