In Praise of the Commonwealth Games

Of course they are not on the same size, scale or global importance as the Olympics. But why allow the best to be the enemy of the good? Four years ago Manchester's Commonwealth Games were a stunning success. Billed as the "friendly games", that is just what they became, engendering a warm spirit of comradeship and amity.

Like Melbourne, where the 18th games opened yesterday, Manchester had to contend with a corps of Cassandras droning on about an anachronistic event born out of imperial arrogance. They are an anachronism but the 2002 games attracted record tourist numbers to the Greater Manchester region, helped rebuild a blighted area of the city, and left a legacy of handsome sports facilities: aquatic centre, Velodrome, national squash centre and a new stadium, which generates £1.9m a year from City football fans for investments in all sports.

Four years ago there were 10 city-wide programmes, now there are 700. They even helped restore Britain's ability to stage sporting events, after the debacles of Wembley and failure to host the 2005 World Athletics championship. Manchester was on the way up long before the games. Chimneys which dominated the skyline when Frederick Engels worked in his father's cotton mill have long gone, but not its entrepreneurial spirit. Now the Cassandras have moved on to Melbourne, pointing to piles of unsold tickets and a lack of big sporting names. Providing a life-enhancing time to unknown competitors should be good enough.