On 4 April 2018, some 35,000 people jammed into Carrara Stadium on Queensland’s Gold Coast to see athletes from seventy-one nations march in to the Opening Ceremony of the 21st Commonwealth Games. It was a beautiful Gold Coast day and signalled the start to eleven days of competition across venues from Cairns in the north of Queensland to Coolangatta on the southern border with New South Wales. It was also the culmination of a ten-year journey that had started back in 2008 when Premier Anna Bligh mooted the suggestion of bringing the Games to the Gold Coast as a means of reviving and transforming a Gold Coast economy that had been badly affected by the Global Financial Crisis. Ten years later, more than 1.2 million spectators filled stadia and other venues as Queenslanders and visitors from interstate and overseas rode trains and buses to see colourful competitions in eighteen different sports and twenty-six different disciplines. In addition, many thousands of hours of television coverage reached a global audience estimated to be 1.5 billion. As a sporting spectacle, the Gold Coast Games were an undoubted success with several world records broken and a large number of Commonwealth records shattered. And notwithstanding understandable complaints about transport difficulties following the Opening Ceremony, the Games went off pretty much without a hitch. There were no major incidents or accidents, athletes were very happy and spectators went home satisfied with seeing spectacular events in excellent conditions. It was the second time the Commonwealth Games had come to Queensland, the first being in Brisbane back in 1982, and the fifth time in Australia – which has always hosted successful Games. Indeed, it had only been twelve years since the Games were last in Australia, hosted by Melbourne. However, this time the Games were hosted by a much smaller regional city in Australia, and they came to the Gold Coast not long after the problematic experience of the Delhi Games in 2010, when many leading athletes decided not to compete and venues were barely finished when competition was about to start. While the success of the Glasgow Games in 2014 certainly contributed significantly to recovering the reputation and image of the Commonwealth Games, according to its inaugural chairman Mark Stockwell, the Gold Coast Games had ‘a bit more riding on its success than has previously been the case : : : as much for the Commonwealth Games [movement] as for the Gold

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黄金海岸 2018 年英联邦运动会：简介

2018 年 4 月 4 日，约 35,000 人涌入昆士兰黄金海岸的卡拉拉体育场，观看来自 71 个国家的运动员参加第 21 届英联邦运动会开幕式。这是一个美丽的黄金海岸日子，标志着从昆士兰北部的凯恩斯到与新南威尔士州接壤的南部边境的库伦加塔的 11 天比赛的开始。这也是始于 2008 年的十年旅程的高潮，当时总理安娜·布莱提出将奥运会带到黄金海岸的建议，作为振兴和改造受疫情严重影响的黄金海岸经济的一种手段。全球金融危机。十年后，超过1。200 万观众挤满体育场和其他场馆，昆士兰人和来自州际和海外的游客乘坐火车和公共汽车观看 18 种不同运动和 26 种不同学科的丰富多彩的比赛。此外，数千小时的电视报道覆盖了全球估计有 15 亿的观众。作为一项体育盛会，黄金海岸运动会无疑取得了成功，打破了多项世界纪录，打破了大量英联邦纪录。尽管在开幕式后对交通困难的抱怨是可以理解的，但奥运会几乎顺利进行。没有发生重大事故或事故，运动员们非常高兴，观众们在良好的条件下看到壮观的赛事满意地回家了。这是英联邦运动会第二次来到昆士兰，第一次是在 1982 年的布里斯班，第五次是在澳大利亚 - 一直举办成功的运动会。事实上，距离上届由墨尔本主办的澳大利亚奥运会仅过去了 12 年。然而，这一次的奥运会是在澳大利亚一个小得多的地区城市举办的，他们在经历了 2010 年德里奥运会的问题后不久就来到了黄金海岸，当时许多领先的运动员决定不参加比赛，场馆也几乎没有完工。在比赛即将开始的时候。虽然 2014 年格拉斯哥奥运会的成功无疑对恢复英联邦运动会的声誉和形象做出了重大贡献，但根据其首任主席马克斯托克韦尔的说法，