European Games

This week I am in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, soaking up the spectacle of the inaugural European Games. As a commentator and journalist, I have to fully immerse myself in the event so it’s difficult to gauge, from this far flung corner of Europe, what kind of impact the competition is having at home.

The Games were conceived just three years ago, will be held every four and are vying for Olympic credibility on a European scale. The host city of Baku proudly boasts a rich cultural heritage and has undergone huge redevelopment in recent years thanks to a thriving petroleum industry. Azerbaijan seized the opportunity to showcase itself on Friday night during a spectacular opening ceremony featuring over a thousand dancers, an enormous hydraulic stage and a performance by the pop singer Lady Gaga.

A significant challenge for these games is the credibility of individual events. A few of the major sports have insisted it remains as a junior level competition so as not to detract from the European or World Championships that they organise themselves. An outsider might imagine that the major sports would be happy to take advantage of the world class facilities in Baku and pass on the administrative burden but there are other financial factors at play. For example, swimming and athletics can sell the television rights as well as gain huge sponsorship deals when owning the big meets themselves. As a result all of the aquatics disciplines are under eighteen and athletics has been graded a third tier event. On the other hand there are several ‘Road to Rio’ qualifiers throughout the seventeen days and TeamGB have already experienced success in the men’s triathlon.

As a commentator and spectator, living and breathing the event, it feels a success. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the world views Baku and its European Games.

Dark times for sport

To say it has been a depressing week for international sport is probably an understatement. Both stories had been brewing for sometime; it just took a while to gather all the evidence before the allegations made the press.

America's FBI made the first move as they arrested several FIFA board members for corruption and money laundering. The head of football’s world governing body, Sepp Blatter, went straight into damage limitation overdrive, denying knowledge of any wrongdoings within his sport. The timing was dangerously inconvenient as the news broke only days before the presidential elections were due to take place but somehow he was still re-elected. Thankfully due to mounting pressure Blatter has agreed to step down next year and I just hope that will mark the end of an era of corruption within the sport.

Athletics was the second sport to enter the firing line. Although the allegations are less concrete, the fact that Panorama has highlighted Mo Farah’s coach as a drugs cheat places an uncomfortable degree of scrutiny on the double Olympic champion. The inference was that athletics had many similarities with that of the Lance Armstrong era in cycling. I sincerely hope the accusations turn out to be false.

Cycling though, had a positive news story to end the week as Bradley Wiggins smashed the hour world record covering over fifty four kilometres in the London Velodrome on Sunday night. On another encouraging note we saw the inaugural women's sport week celebrated across the country which coincided with the start of the women's football World Cup. FIFA, despite all of its wrongdoings, has at least recognised the need for equality in the sport which the BBC has decided to follow by showing full coverage of all the games. It might be one step back but I feel we have taken two large ones forward.