A decade of planning culminates on Wednesday when the eyes of the world zero in on Melbourne for the official opening of the Commonwealth Games amid one of Australia’s biggest security operations to date.
A global audience of 1,5-billion people is expected to tune in at 11am South African time to see Queen Elizabeth II declare the showpiece 12-day event open at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in front of 80Â 000 spectators.
What started 75 years ago as the British Empire Games has endured through the years to emerge as a curious, some would say outdated, festival of sports that nevertheless defies the odds and remains hugely successful.
The two-and-a-half-hour sound and light extravaganza to open the event is being billed by organisers as ”breathtaking, incredible and the best show of its kind”, although some tickets remain unsold.
”There is a feeling of a great sense of achievement,” said Melbourne 2006 chairperson Ron Walker, who called the Games a defining moment for the sports-mad city of 3,6-million people. ”It’s been a great team effort. It’s a big day for all of us.”
The ceremony has been kept a closely guarded secret, but media reports say it features an oversized tram, a giant thong (flip-flop) and inline skaters equipped with rocket-fuelled backpacks zooming around the stadium.
Before it kicks off, the Queen’s Baton, which has travelled 180Â 000km across 71 Commonwealth member states, will be handed to the monarch, but not before it passes along 72 giant floating fish on the Yarra River.
It has not been revealed who will carry the Queen’s Baton into the MCG, although speculation surrounds former champion Australian runners John Landy and Marjorie Jackson-Nelson.
While the event is primarily about sporting minnows taking on sporting heavyweights, controversy has never been far away.
More than 500 protesters gathered outside Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building on Wednesday to ask the queen to sign a treaty with Aboriginal Australians.
Organiser Robbie Thorpe said if she declined, they would march to Government House to deliver a summons to the International Criminal Court alleging Aborigines were the subject of genocide since white settlement.
There have also been calls for the queen to acknowledge the indigenous traditional land owners of the region when she officially opens the Games.
But this appears unlikely, with a Buckingham Palace spokesperson saying that ”the queen’s not giving a speech when she opens the Commonwealth Games”.
The Games has also found itself embroiled in a sex scandal with a massage therapist on the Indian team appearing in court on Wednesday charged with indecent assault on a 16-year-old cleaner at the Games village. The 35-year-old was bailed to reappear at court on Friday.
More than Aus$225-million has been spent on security for the Games, and this was put to the test when four youths scaled a fence and penetrated the Games village on Tuesday.
Victoria state police Commissioner Christine Nixon said they were caught within one minute of getting into the village, which showed that security worked.
”We were aware of them as soon as they came close to the fence and we had them in custody in less than a minute,” she said on Wednesday.
One of Australia’s largest-ever security operations is in place with about 2Â 500 heavily armed military personnel and 13Â 000 police officers protecting venues and participants.
The Australian government is a strong supporter of the United States-led campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sent troops to both countries.
To minimise any risks, the scale of the security operation is comparable only to the clampdown put in place when Sydney hosted the Olympics in 2000. — Sapa-AFP