When the Commonwealth Games suffered a slowdown

Commonwealth Games has an uncanny knack of producing stars of the future. After all, it boasts of some of the most powerful nations, especially in track and field events.

Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, Sherone Simpson or Veronica Campbell-Brown — they all belong to Jamaica. So at its best, the CWG should be a great prospect for high-quality competition.

But with the absence of the stars, Delhi 2010 has witnessed some of the slowest timings registered in the modern Games in the track and field events.

The quickest time in the 100m women’s final by Australia’s Sally Pearson (11.28 seconds) was slower than any other winner of the race in Commonwealth competition. To make things worse, with every disqualification, the winning time got slower, and we have to go right back to 1970 in Edinburgh when Raelene Boyle won in 11.26 seconds.

St Vincent and Grenadines’s Natasha Mayers — recording 11.37 seconds — was the ultimate winner after Pearson’s false start and Nigerian Oludamola Osayomi’s failed drug test, with a time nearly half a second outside the Games record.

The men’s winner too wasn’t really impressive. Lerone Clarke (10.12 seconds) was quick, and did run a relay heat for Jamaica as they won last year’s 4x100m at the world championships in Berlin but he would have been given a tough fight by any of the sprinters from the 1970’s.

One has to go back to 1974 for the last time a world record was set at CWG, when Filbert Bayi of Tanzania broke the mark for the 1500m. In Delhi, winner Silas Kiplagat was 10 seconds shy of Bayi, who still holds the Games record.

The distance events, with Kenya and Uganda to the fore, have been much stronger. Kenya sent its best athletes, and lived to their reputation. But the times were generally slow here too.

“One has to understand that they are races, not time trials. And, in hot and humid conditions, athletes who chased the clock in distance events could have found themselves staggering to the finish line. It may not have been a quick track and field event but it certainly has been one of the best competition wise,” England’s Mark Lewis Francis said, adding that several Games records were set this time, including in women’s 400m by Cayman Islands’s Amantle Montsho.