Gold Coast intensify 2018 Comm Games bid

A high-powered Australian contingent have started last-gasp lobbying in the Caribbean to secure the Gold Coast as host of the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Gold Coast is bidding against the Sri Lankan coastal town of Hambantota to host the 2018 Games, with the winner announced on Saturday (AEDT).

Australia’s bid team have arrived in St Kitts and Nevis, where the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) general assembly will vote for the 2018 host.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, Gold Coast bid chairman Mark Stockwell, Gold Coast Mayor and Olympian Ron Clarke and Australian Commonwealth Games Association chief Perry Crosswhite are among the contingent.

“We will work all the way to the end,” Crosswhite told AAP on Tuesday by telephone from St Kitts and Nevis.

“You always get to a point where, like any competition, you work as hard as you can until the end but you really don’t know the result or what will happen. “So you’re always a bit nervous. “Most of the work is done and what the last few days are really about is ensuring trust with the delegates that we will actually deliver what we say we will deliver.” The bids present a stark choice for the 71 Commonwealth Games Associations who each vote for the host. Gold Coast would be the fifth time Australia host a Games while Sri Lanka is seeking the Games for a first time.

The CGF’s own evaluation commission described the Gold Coast bid as a low risk option, with proven infrastructure, security and venues.

The commission rated Hambantota - a south-eastern coastal town currently with no international airport and existing accommodation of only 1009 beds - a medium to high risk option. But Crosswhite said the Australians were taking nothing for granted ahead of the vote. “They are really two contrasting bids,” he said.

“The Gold Coast - from a country which has held the Games four times before and done all of them very well and very successfully - in a regional city with a new model.

“And we have got a country which has not hosted the Games before and is one that is emerging from the civil war and the natural disaster of the tsunami, in their case it’s growing and it’s all about development.”