2 Louise Martin

Published on Friday 28 December 2007 13:28

GLASGOW COMMONWEALTH GAMES SUPREMO

The driving force behind Glasgow's successful bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games

It is a little after 6pm on Friday, November 9. In the ballroom of a hotel in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, Louise Martin's nerves are jangling like a bunch of keys dropped into an out-of-tune piano. Any moment now, Mike Fennell, president of the Commonwealth Games Federation, will announce which city will host the 2014 Games.

Glasgow, which she represents, is the favourite, but can Abuja, the Nigerian capital, pull off a last-minute upset? The video message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu had been powerful stuff. "A vote for Abuja is a vote for Africa," he said. Could that have swung it? Martin hopes not. She knows that a vote for Glasgow is a vote for Scotland. She knows the Games will boost the regeneration of Glasgow's east end, and how inspiring they will be for Scotland's children.

When Commonwealth delegates visited Glasgow, she took them to Dalmarnock, Tollcross and Ibrox. There was no shying away from showing the place as it really is. If they saw the social problems for themselves, they might be more inclined to vote for the city and start the process of change.

Her gut feeling is that Glasgow has won it. She knows each delegate personally. Her instinct is that most of them will have voted for Scotland. But she's so tired. What if she's got it wrong?

The First Minister keeps squeezing her hand. Is he trying to calm her down or steady his own nerves? She had tried to talk to him about the bid earlier, but he changed the subject. Alex Salmond usually seems so confident, and when they had met the night before, to consider the figures, they had worked out that Glasgow was going to win by 47 votes to 24. So why are they both so nervous now? For her it is simple: she feels responsible. As head of the Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland, she has spent four years working towards this moment. It has become personal.

Mike Fennell is opening the envelope. In a moment it will all be over. "I have much pleasure in announcing that the host for the 2014 Commonwealth Games is Glasgow."

It was the most emotionally draining day of Martin's life, the culmination of 14 months travelling round the world promoting Glasgow, living up to her reputation as "the hardest-working person in Scottish sport". The result when it came, left her excited, joyous, ecstatic and, most of all, relieved. She had visited 64 countries, at one point visiting five African nations in five days. When she wasn't catching red-eye flights to New Zealand and India, Martin was waking up in the dead of night, worrying about the bid.

There had been blows along the way. Like the attack on Glasgow Airport in June. All of a sudden Scotland seemed less secure. On the day that happened, Martin was attending a performance of Black Watch with Sean Connery and a Commonwealth delegation, part of her charm offensive to ensure the bid went Glasgow's way. She believes, though, that the attack may have strengthened Scotland's case – it showed the emergency services could cope with something of that nature.

A lot of people worked extremely hard on Glasgow's successful bid for the Commonwealth Games, but Martin is frequently singled out as vital to the cause. She is a volunteer and was not paid for the work she did, even though she often toiled seven days a week. Affectionately referred to by her team as "the Queen", she is regarded as a supreme strategist. The key to Scotland's success, according to Salmond, was that Martin knew every single delegate eligible to vote for who should host the Games. More than that, she had a file on them containing details of their interests, sporting history, family and any links they had with Scotland.

"For example, there's a guy, Francis Nyangweso, from Uganda," Salmond said. "He boxed against Muhammad Ali in the 1960 Olympics and won Commonwealth Games bronze in Perth in 1962. He was East African champion. And his son, Tony, is at West of Scotland University. He plays rugby for Cartha, and his dad is worried about him, because he plays wearing dreadlocks. We know all this basically because of Louise."

The Scottish team were able to use their personal knowledge of the delegates to build a very clear picture of which way they were going to vote. The information on each delegate was put into a colour-coded folder. Green meant the delegate would vote for Glasgow, red signalled a vote for Abuja and yellow meant undecided. Salmond has called it the most effective lobbying operation he has ever known and described Martin as "incomparable".

It helps that she is extremely competitive. Martin, who is 61 and has three grandchildren, grew up in Dunfermline as a gifted swimmer. At 15, she competed in the Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia, where she made the finals in the 100m and 200m backstroke. She gave up swimming competitively at the age of 21, had two children and became a lecturer in sports nutrition. When her daughter Kerry began competing in gymnastics, Martin became involved behind the scenes. She managed the Scottish gymnastics team at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria. Five years later she became the first woman elected to the executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation.

At the end of last month, having served two terms, Martin stood down as leader of the Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland, although she will be on the organising committee. In her farewell speech she said she believed that 2014 "will be the greatest Games the world has ever seen… It means too much to too many people for it to be anything else."

She has given Scotland a chance to shine on the international stage, and Glasgow an opportunity to address its problems and become a greater city as it prepares to host one of the most prestigious occasions in world sport.

Peter Ross