I bet there are a few twitchy people in London watching India’s Commonwealth Games debacle unfold and thinking, “Yeah, we’ll be alright for London 2012, won’t we?” The situation in India is now beyond repair, which is a shame for India as they seek to push themselves forward as one of the progressive superpowers in the world akin to China and the Beijing Olympics.

Unfortunately, for Delhi, the Commonwealth Games is becoming a national embarrassment and a political nightmare for India.

The pictures of a filthy Athletes Village are anything but abhorrent – and those images have stalled the departures of athletes from Scotland, Wales and New Zeland. Five other nations are now showing serious concerns about sending their athletes to the games. The Scottish sports minister Shona Robison, said there were still “serious health and safety concerns” about the athletes accommodation but that she was “very confident” Scotland’s athletes will fly out to Delhi, but when is still open for debate. England have announced that they will leave on time as scheduled.

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Seems, we will have Rooney featuring in a final this summer. Granted, Martyn Rooney, is not as famous as his footballing namesake, but he does have a decent chance of winning some gold. The 2010 European Championships, held this year in Barcelona, Spain, once was a nice, comfortable place where we could send our top 400 metre runners, knowingly they would come back with gold or at worse silver. However, the days of Roger Black, Duaine Ladejo and Iwan Thomas are filed away under the heading, “British Athletics, The Time When We Were Good At Running”.

Of course it has been a long wait since we have had much success with British Athletics betting. By that I mean exactly what “Smithy from Gavin and Stacey” said in his Sport Relief speech, proper athletics, the running type not the sitting down sports. Team GB failed to win a single individual gold medal at the previous European Championships.

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After a two year ban, Dwain Chambers, has finally been reselected for Team Gb and will run in the 60m at the European Indoor Championships in Turin on the 6-8 March 2009 – he has been automatically made favourite by the bookies upon hearing the news that Chambers will run. The powerhouse sprinter was sidelined by UK’s governing athletic body (UKA) after testing positive for a banned drug.

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