Glasgow will be hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games in July so we thought we’d have a dedicated meeting to look at various aspects of both the Commonwealth and Olympic Games. We started with a quick look at the orginal Olympic Games (776BC to 393 AD) which were abolished to suppress paganism.
The Modern Games started in 1896, the Deaflympics 1924 in Paris (originally known as Silent Games), the Commonwealth Games in 1930 in Hamilton Canada, (originally known as the Friendly Games) the Paralympics 1960 in Rome, the Special Olympics 1968 in Chicago, Youth Olympics 2010 in Singapore and lastly the controversial Enhanced Games in Las Vegas in 2026 where participants competed for large cash prizes and performance enhancing drugs were permitted.
Those attending had researched the following aspects in more detail:
- Doping and the Enhanced Games
- The first Commonwealth Games
- A perspective of the 2026 Commonwealth Games from a member whose son-in-law is the Chair of Commonwealth Games, Scotland
- Rugy 7’s – exciting short games
- 2 famous paralympians – Dames Tani Grey-Thompson and Sarah Storey
- Funding and how the Olympic & Paralympic games are funded through the UK government and National Lottery with participants of all the other games are mianly self-fuded, relying on grants and commercial sponsorships. This often means athletes are participants are mainly competing against athletes from other countries who are fully funded.
All agreed it was a successful night but being such a huge topic they had hardly scratched the surface. Well worth other groups considering to take on this subject. The Bronze medal in the photo above was won by a member’s son for Golf at the Deaflympics held in Samsun in 2017.