Commonwealth Games

For those of you that have never heard of them, they are like the Olympics held every four years but are held 2 years after the Olympics and only has the nations of the Commonwealth, or those that left on good terms. :P

The major Commonwealth nations are England, India, Canada, Australia and the rest are minor nations. Sorry if you are from one of those nations. :P

These games are largely turning into a farce though, many of the world's best athletes obviously do not come from a Commonwealth nation, but still, I believe there are seventy odd nations involved with twenty six of them so far winning medals.

Commonwealth Games are being held in Melbourne this time around and it has been good to experience some of the events and the atmosphere. I haven't gone to anything formal but the street cycling and marathons go via St Kilda by the beach which is not far from me.

So far, Australia has won 43 of the 113 gold medals and has 115 of the 335 medals. Kinda sad when one nation has 38% of the gold medals so it is almost Australia vs the rest of the Commonwealth although there are some really good athletes out there, with Nigeria, Jamaica, Kenya and Cameroon you get some of the worlds best runners there while England and Canada are the other major cycling nations. There is just not a whole lot of competition in the pools where the USA and other European nations are our major competitors. Gymnastics is also kinda bare of the major talent, I think Canada is the only serious gymnastic nation there.

It is funny listening on the radio about the athletes going wild over here with the night life, even those that have events on. Traffic sucks balls though. :(