Richard Moore: Pune paves way for Delhi's 2010 games

BEFORE the Commonwealth Youth Games got underway in Pune there were rumours that the senior games in Delhi, in 2010, could be in grave danger, with some even talking of the worst case scenario – that the games be handed back to the last host, Melbourne – becoming a genuine possibility.

The Commonwealth Games Federation chief executive Mike Hooper has been spending half his time in the Indian city, overseeing preparations that are lagging seriously behind schedule.

Pune was therefore something of a test event – and, with the games closing on Saturday, the question now is to ask how India fared.

The report card is mixed, to say the least. The venues were excellent, and the food in the athletes' village described by one official as "top notch", but that didn't fully compensate for some serious organisational glitches, or for the rats in some quarters of the village, which almost prompted the Jamaicans to flee before the event had even got underway.

In stifling heat there were also problems when the air-conditioning at the shooting range malfunctioned; a number of athletes were struck ill; and media relations were poor, with all accreditations misplaced and having to be re-processed.

In a week in which IOC president Jacques Rogge, a guest at the youth games, encouraged India to bid for the 2020 Olympic Games, the country's Olympic association president Suresh Kalmadi admitted that there had been "a few problems… but the event has taught us a few lessons which we will keep in mind for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi."

Unfortunately, the problems facing the Delhi games seem to extend beyond rats and air-conditioning. A look at the official website confirms that the facilities – all of them – still exist only as those rather artificial looking artists' impressions.

Work began on the 58,000-seat main stadium last August and is scheduled to finish on 31 January 2010. The same completion date is given for the lawn bowls facility, while, a month earlier, will – fingers crossed – see the final touches put to the facilities housing weightlifting, gymnastics, wrestling, shooting, table tennis, archery, squash, badminton, table tennis, tennis and swimming.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of breathing space. But the most worried sports will be those of track cycling and swimming. The "final design" is being developed for the swimming pool, while the velodrome appears still to be at "concept design" stage.

All of which seems at odds with Rogge's encouraging words. "I am sure that if India bids (for the 2020 Olympics] then it will be very solid and comprehensive," Rogge said last week.

But he added an important qualification: "I am sure a successful Commonwealth Games will be a big step in a successful Olympic bid."

The line from the Delhi organising committee has always been that in India things can be done more quickly than elsewhere. Realistically, they now have a year to demonstrate that.

No rest for footballers

THE SCOTTISH Institute of Sport is hosting its High Performance Conference in Peebles this week, with Inigo Mujika, associate professor at the University of the Basque Country, among the speakers who have been lined up.

The title of Mujika's talk is "ensuring optimum performance through peaking and tapering," with much of his work focused on individual athletes, for whom tapering – also known as resting – is as common as it is considered important in the build-up to a major event.

For team sport athletes, however, it remains unusual – and this, for Mujika, is plain daft.

He points to the case of Denmark at the 1992 European Football Championship, who, famously, were only invited ten days before the tournament began in Sweden. Yugoslavia had qualified for the finals, but were excluded by Uefa because the country was torn apart by war.

Half of the Denmark squad had to be called back from their holidays on the beach – they hadn't been training for three to five weeks – while the other half were still playing in the Danish domestic league.

The long and the short of it was that the team trained together for just six days, yet they went on to be crowned winners, beating Germany in the final. "The team's success," says Mujika, "has been partly attributed to the fact that the players were not physically and psychologically exhausted." Tapering, then, could be the answer. But will it catch on in football? No chance.

Why no-one for tennis?

ON A great weekend for Scottish tennis, thanks to Andy Murray's exploits in Madrid, and with a number of talented players apparently emerging behind him, it seemed odd that no Scots appeared in the tennis competition at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune.

According to the governing body no Scots were deemed to have met the standard, though it is understood that one did, but opted not to go. The qualifying criteria for the Commonwealth Games – youth and senior – are set by Commonwealth Games Scotland in conjunction with the relevant governing body, so there is some leeway.

In the event, though, Tennis Scotland put no young players forward for Pune. Which might be understandable – the Commonwealth Youth Games do not currently represent a significant milestone on the way to tennis glory – but you would have thought that young players could benefit from the experience, nonetheless.

Training dries up for gold medal man Scott

SCOTLAND'S most successful performer at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune in India, double gold medal-winning swimmer Douglas Scott, will return home today to the prospect of no training facility. The 50-metre pool in which the Strathaven swimmer trains, at nearby East Kilbride, is to close on Sunday for a period of 14 months, not so much for a refurbishment, says his coach Andy Figgins, but for "fairly major work."

Refreshingly, Figgins, last year's British Swimming Coaches and Teaching Association's junior swimming coach of the year, doesn't wail and gnash his teeth at the prospect. Asked if the 50-metre pool should be considered a major factor in Scott's three-medal haul – he also won relay bronze – Figgins hesitated. "I'm not sure," he said. "I don't think it would be a problem to train in a 25-metre pool."

Just as well, since that is what he and the East Kilbride Swimming Club, of which he is head coach, will have to do for the next 14 months. "We've managed to secure sufficient training time between various local authorities and college pools," says Figgins.

Still, with the 50-metre pools in Glasgow and Edinburgh also due to close for major refurbishments, and with slow progress on the proposed 5million facility in Aberdeen, it does seem that Scotland will have a dearth of full-sized pools in the build-up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.