The Commonwealth Games is likely to enter Africa in the near future as there is \u201cactive interest” from African nations, Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) chief executive officer Katie Sadleir said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The Birmingham Games will conclude on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it will open up a few eyes for the future Games,” she said, adding that \u201cthere is active interest from countries in Africa in staging the Games.”<\/p>\n
South African city Durban was the original hosts for the 22nd edition of the CWG before it pulled out citing financial constraints.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the privilege of speaking at the Sports Ministers conference, and there were several ministers there from Africa saying \u2018when is it our turn to host a Games?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly it\u2019s something we are interested in talking to a few other countries together to see how the model would like,” she said.<\/p>\n
Largely COVID-19 free, most successful in ticket sales<\/p>\n
COVID-19 did cause some initial jitters but Games CEO Ian Reid said they could handle the situation due to a wide network of paramedics and testing facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very pleased with the way that\u2019s gone. The approach we took at the start of the Games was very much about how to get athletes and officials to the Village \u2018clean\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe focus was very much on making sure that they are tested at the welcome centre. All went off really well.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the feedback was generally positive and the case numbers and the low percentage 1-3 per cent on certain days was much lower than we had anticipated. A vast majority of athletes were healthy and able to compete with their optimum performance,” he added.<\/p>\n
In terms of ticket sales, Reid said the Games would break all records.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of now 1.5 million tickets have been sold across the venues and this is not the final figure as some matches are still on. We had 90 per cent in most of the venues which would make it the most successful CWG.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African city Durban was the original hosts for the 22nd edition of the CWG before it pulled out citing financial constraints<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":14466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4],"tags":[7,14,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-14469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-sports","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n