LET The Golden Sporgy Commence.

Commonwealth Games 2014: Admit it, you can’t wait for the Glasgow Games to begin. Here’s why 

 

The Commonwealth Games start in a few hours and it’ll be an orgy of sport, not to mention an orgy of gold for Australia.
You didn’t know they were even on, did you? You’re wondering how the Commonwealth Games are even still a thing, right? This guy certainly is…

1. The Commonwealth Games is 10 days when Australia is the best country in the world

It’s when Australia wins everything, beats everyone and generally just feels utterly terrific about itself.

You get to have really hip hairstyles too. Source: News Corp Australia

Never mind that the opposition is basically just a couple of small Pacific islands and a minor northern hemisphere archipelago (where this year’s Games are being held).
Oh yeah, and Canada generally comes too but you know, they’re Canada and there’s no snow or ice so they’re not really very good at anything.

Oh, Canada. You failed again. Source: News Corp Australia

In a world where it’s hard to say that Australia is definitively the best at anything, the Commonwealth Games allow us to live the illusion that we rule the world, and live it large.
2. We don’t just win, we dominate
For the record, we’ve won 804 gold medals and 2080 medals overall at the Commonwealth Games since the first Empire Games (as they were then known) in 1930. And we haven’t been knocked off the top of the medal tally since 1986. That was in Edinburgh, Scotland. Hope that’s not a bad omen!
3. Another excellent thing about the Commonwealth Gam es is athletics, a pure, ancient, highly entertaining sport we really don’t watch enough of
Athletics is actually one of the Commonwealth Games sports where there are loads of world class athletes. Ever heard of Usain Bolt? Ever hear about Kenya and Tanzania? They’ve got more world-class long distance runners than you’ve had hot haggis dinners.
We’ve got one or two world class sprinters ourselves, by the way.

Dare ya to tell Sally Pearson the Comm Games are for wusses. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images

4. The swimming
It’s also great to watch the swimming at the Comm Games. It’s kind of like a cheat sheet so you can pretend to know what you’re talking about come the next Olympics. For the swimmers themselves, it’s a great opportunity to have a competitive hit-out in a Games environment where you stay in a village and so on.
5. Then there are the silly sports. Sorry, the, er, lesser sports. Like lawn bowls
Lawn bowls has some surprisingly young competitors, much like the curling at the Winter Olympics, which we can surely all agree was one of the surprise smash hits of Sochi.