SITTING in the lobby of Melbourne's Sofitel hotel on Friday, Derek Casey might have been excused for wearing a broad grin. As the recently appointed director of Glasgow's bid to stage the 2014 Commonwealth Games, he has experienced ten days which have done much to sell the line that he came to peddle: namely, that Glasgow is the best of the three candidates, Abuja in Nigeria and Halifax in Canada being the others, to inherit the baton from New Delhi, the hosts in 2010.
To many observers, Glasgow is the favourite at this stage. Its bid has few weaknesses when compared to the other two. Yet Casey, formerly the chief executive of the UK Sports Council and Sport England, is cautious. He refuses to say that he is more o
ptimistic now than when he travelled to Australia. Asked to put a percentage on Glasgow's chances, he replies "33%".
In this respect, he has taken the advice of Lord Sebastian Coe, whom he met last week in Melbourne to discuss the bid. Wary of the status of favourite, particularly given the experience of Paris, which was the outstanding candidate to host the 2012 Olympics before being pipped by a fast finishing London bid, Casey stresses that there is a long way to go - 20 months to be precise - before the vote is taken in Sri Lanka.
What he will concede is that the performance of the Scotland team has helped immeasurably. "Of course, the decision has to be made before the next Games, so what the team has done here is fantastic," says Casey. "They've been superb and that's given the bid an enormous boost. It's the perfect lead-in and without that it would have made our job more difficult. It gives us a foot in the door to have more technical discussions."
He says there are two main components to the bid, two arguments to be won: one emotional, the other technical. It is the technical aspect - Glasgow's capability to host the Games - that has been emphasised in Melbourne. "We've tried to be business-like out here and hopefully we've achieved that.
"Sebastian Coe's advice was to get the timing right. We've got a really good story, but it's a story that has got to unfold over the next 20 months."
Some aspects will unfold much sooner. One is the appointment of Glasgow 2014 ambassadors. They will not just be figureheads - they are already in place in First Minister Jack McConnell, Glasgow Council Leader Steven Purcell, and Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland chair Louise Martin - but "advisors/auditors" who will "get their sleeves rolled up" in helping to make the bid a success.
A first international ambassador is expected to be confirmed in the next few days. And given that Casey can barely contain his anticipation over this appointment, it seems that it is someone with pedigree. He will not confirm that it is a sporting figure, merely that they will be bringing in "big names, people who've gone to the Games before, real insiders who know the process."
"We want their advice," says Casey, "but we also want them to test what we're saying. We want to take a rigorous approach to drawing up the bid programme because we're determined to have the best technical bid."
In April or May another announcement is expected to confirm which sports would feature in a Glasgow Games. "We're getting close to that decision," says Casey. "We'd really like to have golf. It would show off Scotland pretty well. It would feature the best amateurs in the Commonwealth, and having it at Loch Lomond or Turnberry or Troon would be spectacular."
New Delhi has proposed adding tennis, archery and snooker and billiards to the programme for 2010, but the Commonwealth Games Federation has deferred making a decision, pending a review of sports that is expected to be concluded early next year. It has been suggested that a cap may be introduced on the number of sports, and that more core sports could be added to the five - athletics, aquatics, lawn bowls, rugby sevens and netball - currently on the programme.
One aspect of the bidding process that Casey and the Glasgow 2014 team refuse to be drawn on any shortcomings of the competing bids. That is in keeping with the spirit of the Friendly Games, but you don't have to look too hard to see the hurdles they face.
The suitability of the Nigerian capital of Abuja hosting the Games has already been widely debated. There is huge appeal in taking the Games to Africa for the first time, but many feel that Nigeria is the wrong choice. Would the CGF risk its Games in the hands of a country with reputedly high levels of political corruption, where the last major sporting event - the African Games in 2003 - saw an outbreak of malaria that caused the deaths of four competitors?
A fear that both Glasgow and Halifax might have is that Abuja will attract a block African vote. But this, according to insiders from some of the African nations, is misplaced. There will be no block African vote.
On paper Halifax, in Nova Scotia, is the main threat to Glasgow. But it is already meeting with massive local opposition over the cost.
There is also the issue of size: Halifax is a city of 350,000 people - it is the size of Aberdeen - in a province populated by one million. With 15,000 volunteers working at the Melbourne Games, and over 1.5 million tickets sold, the benchmark for the scale of future Games has been set very high. Can Halifax hope to reach it?
Then there is the facilities question. The CGF stipulate that the host must have, at the minimum, a 45,000-seat stadium, a 4,000-seat velodrome, 6,000-seat swimming arena, and an athletes' village with the capacity for 8,000 people. Currently Halifax, which, in sporting terms, has hosted big curling, ice skating and ice hockey events, has one 10,000-seat arena.
The CGF's relationship with Canada has also been strained at these Games over TV coverage. Until ten days before the Games there was to be no coverage at al. Then, finally, CBC signed up to broadcast events from Melbourne on a pay-per-view basis; but it has been rumoured that the Games organisers had to pay to have their event televised. This has not fostered good relations between a potential host country and the federation.
Casey says he and a sizeable delegation from Glasgow, including the ten-person observer committee, made up of individuals from Glasgow Council, the Scottish Executive, sportscotland, Strathclyde Police and BBC Scotland, also came to Melbourne to learn.
The opening ceremony offered ideas in terms of engaging the whole city, but it drew criticism for having the athletes play a minor role. "I'd really like to make the opening ceremony in Glasgow athlete-centred," says Casey. "But what we've learned from Melbourne with regard to the opening ceremony is having it throughout the city, by the river and in the parks, getting the community involved - that could be fantastic."
But it is eight years away. Possibly. "We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we have an extremely strong partnership and the financial plan is in place, and I think that has come across in our meetings here in Melbourne," says Casey.
"Now it is all about showing that we are really hungry to have the Commonwealth Games in Scotland."
The full article contains 1271 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
