George Rogers: The Commonwealth Games

For this blog, I thought it was only right that this issue should be completely dedicated to the wondrous challenges overcome at the Commonwealth Games

The Para-sport that took place in Glasgow, was seamlessly incorporated into the normal proceedings instead of a separate games for disabled athletes like the Olympics and Paralympics.  An amazing example of this was the T12 100m (T12 means for blind athletes with guides). Scottish sprinter Libby Clegg won this race and in the process gained the first and only gold for the Scottish on the track! That is a pretty amazing way to represent the para sport community. I am extremely pleased to say also that the 20th commonwealth games in Glasgow held the biggest Para-sport programme in any commonwealth games ever.
Next up is my own experience up in Glasgow for the Commonwealths. I had tickets to the final day of the Table Tennis and despite quite an early start after only arriving in Glasgow at 11pm, I had a cracking day. The city was buzzing the whole time I was there, much like London in 2012. I saw six games of Table Tennis, all varying in length, my favourites of which being the men’s singles semi-final which took place between England’s Liam Pitchford and Ning Gao of Singapore. Even though Pitchford got beaten 4-3, it was an amazing game and Pitchford showed resilience to the end. Also, the bronze medal match in the mixed doubles between England and Singapore was another amazing match, however this time it resulted in an England win.

Altogether, the best moment of the day came at the end when not one, not two, but three English pairs took to the podium for an England 1,2,3 medal ceremony in the mixed doubles. Jerusalem has never sounded so good! Oh, and also, to round of a perfect day, I ran into multi Olympic gold medalist rower-turned-presenter: Matthew Pincent.

10 September 2014 by TheBox