Price of Games

• The scaled-down Glasgow 2026 has led to a decrease in the number of multi-sport events, impacting India, the most populous country in the Commonwealth Games family.
• India has consistently earned top-five finishes in the new millennium, including its best-ever second place showing with 101 medals in 2010.
• The Games have been limited to 10 integrated disciplines, including para-sports, which has led to the drop of some medal-producing disciplines.
• India’s medal prospects in 2026 will be restricted to athletics and para-athletics, weightlifting and para-powerlifting, boxing, judo, bowls and para-bowls.
• Shooting and wrestling have produced glorious moments for the Games, with top medal-getting shooters Jaspal Rana, Samaresh Jung, and triple goldwinning wrestlers Sushil Kumar and Vinesh Phogat.
• The Indian women’s hockey team’s gold medal-winning moment in Manchester in 2002 and wrestler Geeta Phogat’s historic gold in Delhi in 2010 inspired blockbuster movies.
• India has consistently been placed among the top countries in table tennis, with Manika Batra’s superb showing of four medals in 2018.
• The cost burden has impacted the staging of what appears to be a dying’spectacle’.