“People of Ahmedabad, be prepared, because the city is also going to welcome the Olympics in 2036.”
Amit Shah made this promise last December at the closing ceremony of the Sansad Khel Mahotsav in Ahmedabad, only days after the city won the hosting rights for the 2030 Commonwealth Games. Funnily enough, this is still not officially guaranteed. The IOC has not opened any host race for 2036 and India has merely expressed its interest. Yet, this announcement was made to loud applause inside a sports complex the government had just built for Rs 800 crore.
It’s not as if our ambition is futile either. Last Sunday night, at the closing ceremony of the 2026 Commonwealth Games, Commonwealth Sport President Donald Rukare handed the flag to P.T. Usha and Neeraj Chopra, who passed it on to Gujarat’s Deputy CM Harsh Sanghavi. There was also a cultural showcase, with Scottish and Indian musicians performing a jugalbandi, that gave the world its first look at Amdavad 2030, the branding for the centenary edition that India will now host.
But the question is, if hosting these Games is such an honor, why did no other country seem to want them?
Well, one country did want them once. Victoria in Australia had signed up to host but backed out in 2023 once estimates crossed AU$6 billion, which left Glasgow as the backup plan. They had to pay AU$380 million in compensation. So, in one of the stranger arrangements we’ve seen, it was this exit payment that largely funded Glasgow’s Games. Scotland agreed to step in only if its own taxpayers paid nothing. Naturally, the event had to be shrunk to ensure affordability, going from nineteen sports to ten across four venues. All of it was to be accommodated within a budget of about £160 million, where Birmingham had spent £780 million on the previous edition. The cuts effectively removed shooting, wrestling, badminton, hockey and cricket from the scheduled roster. These happen to be the five sports most of India’s medals have always come from.
Through the two weeks of competition, British newspapers repeatedly asked whether the Commonwealth Games are dying, and it is pretty difficult to argue with them. It is true that Britain has hosted twice in a row just because no other country came forward. It’s also true that the edition that just concluded was running on money paid by a host that fled.
Suddenly, in the middle of all this uncertainty, India volunteered. When Commonwealth Sport confirmed Ahmedabad as the centenary host last November, ours was the bid chosen over Nigeria’s Abuja, the only other city in the race. Nobody is hiding what this is really about either, with a letter of intent already sent to the IOC for the 2036 Olympics and our sports minister linking the 2030 Games with India’s plans of becoming a sporting powerhouse by 2047. In fact, Harsh Sanghavi ran an “Ahmedabad Experience Centre” in Glasgow itself, promoting the next edition before these Games got over.
Now while this sounds alright, there is a valid concern. Ahmedabad intends to stage seventeen sports on a budget that the BBC reports as nearly double Glasgow’s, the exact opposite of the formula that just kept these Games alive. If we were to go by our own record, the last time India hosted was back in 2010. And that event in Delhi became infamous for delays, inflated costs and corruption inquiries that carried on for years after the closing ceremony, all of it paid for with public money. Perhaps Ahmedabad will turn out differently. So far, though, what exists on record is a cost estimate still being worked out and assurances that lessons have been learned.
Then there is the question of who this big audition is even for. The IOC, under its new president Kirsty Coventry, has paused the entire 2036 host race while a committee reviews how hosts should be chosen. The same body has raised concerns about the way the Indian Olympic Association is governed. Glasgow, unfortunately, proved its point, since doping violations during the qualification period cost India weightlifting quota places that the rules did not let us refill. The IOA itself sounds careful these days. Asked by the BBC about delivering 2030, its chief executive Raghu Iyer replied, “I don’t think one can give any guarantees.” Odd, right, when you think about it? The home minister guarantees an Olympics that does not exist, while the Olympic association will not guarantee the Games we already have.
The whole display becomes ironic when you consider how well this year’s smaller, humbler Games treated us. India sent 122 athletes, nearly half of Birmingham’s 210, yet finished fourth on the table with 39 medals. Almost one in three of them came home with something around their neck. Neeraj Chopra and Yash Vir Singh took silver and bronze together in the javelin final. Asmita Dey and Harsh Singh became India’s first ever judo gold medalists at these Games, in the very sport that had lost an athlete to a doping suspension before the contingent even left. Mirabai Chanu defended her weightlifting title, while every single one of our ten boxers who entered the semifinals fought through to the finals. Stripped of half its spectacle, missing our strongest sports, this was still among the most capable runs India has had at the Commonwealth Games.
That, then, is the peculiar inheritance India carried home along with the flag. These Games survived by becoming modest. Modesty, it turns out, suited our athletes far more than anyone expected. Nonetheless, the ambitious plan for Ahmedabad is to make everything ‘wow’ again, on a promise our own history argues against, for a prize whose selection process currently stands suspended. Hopefully, somewhere between the showcases and the countdown, those in charge will spend as much time answering the hard questions as they have spent applauding themselves for the easy ones.
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