AskBiography Logo   Latest News  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Google Buzz  Became Fan - Facebook  Subscribe to RSSRSS   Bookmark and Share

Commonwealth Games

Commonwealth Games
Commonwealth Games Federation seal, adopted in 2001
NameCommonwealth Games
CaptionCommonwealth Games Federation seal, adopted in 2001
MottoHUMANITY � EQUALITY � DESTINY
HeadquartersLondon, United Kingdom
Leader TitleCommonwealth Secretariat
Leader NameHon. Michael Fennell OJ, CD

     Home | Sporting Event Organization | Commonwealth Games





The Commonwealth Games is an international, multi-sport event involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations.

As well as many Olympic sports, the Games also include some sports that are played mainly in Commonwealth countries, such as lawn bowls, rugby sevens and netball. The Games are overseen by the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), which also controls the sporting programme and selects the host cities. The host city is selected from across the Commonwealth, with eighteen cities in seven countries having hosted it.

The event was first held in 1930 under the title of the British Empire Games in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The event was renamed as the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954, the British Commonwealth Games in 1970, and gained its current title in 1978. Only six teams have attended every Commonwealth Games: Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. Australia has been the highest achieving team for eleven games, England for seven and Canada for one.

There are currently 54 members of the Commonwealth of Nations, and 71 teams participate in the Games. The four Home Nations of the United KingdomEngland, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland � send separate teams to the Commonwealth Games, and individual teams are also sent from the British Crown dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man (unlike at the Olympic Games, where the combined "Great Britain" team represents all four home nations and the Crown dependencies). Many of the British overseas territories also send their own teams. The Australian external territory of Norfolk Island also sends its own team, as do the Cook Islands and Niue, two states in free association with New Zealand. It was reported that Tokelau, another dependency of New Zealand would be sending a team to the 2010 Games in New Delhi, India. In the end, however, they did not.


Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Commonwealth/Games?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 410 Gone in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Commonwealth/Games?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10" in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 260