Commonwealths ‘are key to sporting innovation’

The Birmingham 2022 event broke new ground with the introduction of 3x3 basketball, with T20 women’s cricket also making its debut at a multi-sport event and setting world attendance records.

Commonwealth Games Federation boss Katie Sadleir believes there will be much more like that to come at the Victoria 2026 Games and beyond.

Sadleir said: “I have focused quite a lot of my time during this Games meeting with the chief executives and the presidents of the international federations, hosting them, understanding where they’re going.

“We want to make sure that the Commonwealth Games Federation is the partner of choice when it comes to trialling up different things.

“The discussions have been ‘What is your next thing? What does it look like? How have you thought about rolling it out? How can we work with you on that?’

“We want to be known as an innovative, evolving, relevant Games and we want to do that in partnership with the federations and they’ve come back with some really exciting things.”

The Australian state of Victoria will host the next edition of the Games in 2026 across four regional hubs.

The chief executive of the local organising committee said: “I think we’ll have innovative formats of dynamic sports, which are just going to be another platform, a global platform, a world-class platform for sporting excellence, and I think that’s what ultimately these Games will be remembered for.”

The Victoria Games will be the first hosted on a multi-city basis, with an athlete village located in each hub.

It could well be a testing ground as the Games evolves to similar multi-city, and even multi-country, hosts in the future.

Sadleir said there had been “three or four” informal expressions of interest already in hosting future Games.

She also said there had been a “real will and desire”, particularly from the sports ministers of African nations who she spoke to at a pre-Games summit, to discuss a multi-country approach.