CWG should not have been awarded to India :Australia

Melbourne : Australia’s Olympic Committee president John Coates said on Friday that the Commonwealth Games should not have been awarded to Delhi.

Coates said the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) lacked the resources to monitor progress and to ensure that construction deadlines were met.

“The Games shouldn’t have been awarded to Delhi in hindsight,” Coates told Australian radio.

But he said that his country’s was likely to attend.

Coates said the Commonwealth Games Federation could have been more actively involved in the preparations.

“The problem is the Commonwealth Games Federation is under-resourced. It doesn’t have the ability to monitor the progress of cities in the way the Olympic Committee does,” he said.

Coates said had the International Olympic Committee been involved, the work would have been monitored better.

“If that had been the case here in Delhi, then certainly something would have been done a lot sooner because obviously the venues are not ready,” he said.

“You can’t ever cut any slack when your focus should be on the best conditions for the athletes,” he added.

But Coates refused to say whether participating nations should pull out of the Games, which are already short of star power after several high-profile withdrawals such as Usain Bolt, Chris Hoy and Asafa Powell.

“I’m certainly not going to be drawn into making a commentary on whether Australia and other countries should pull out from this part of the world,” he said.