Commonwealth Games team gets a great welcome home
LOCAL athletes and officials have been returning after a busy Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
Guernsey’s chef de mission Angela Stuart, who was present on the return flight, said that it was one of the best games she had ever experienced with the team.
‘You cannot explain the atmosphere, you simply have to be there,’ she said.
‘All of the stadiums were so big, there are thousands and thousands of people there watching.
‘The atmosphere in the villages is so friendly, and when the sport is going on in the stadiums it is just electric.
‘It’s always a wonderful experience being at a games that is so multicultural and has so many different sports going on.
‘My colleague and I were there for three weeks as we went ahead of the team to prepare, so it is really nice to be back and to receive this welcome from everybody.’
Bob Gallagher, head of the team’s medical services, said: ‘It was an amazing experience to be with top level athletes from Guernsey, who performed fantastically well.
‘It was great to see Ozzy Osbourne [singing at the closing ceremony] and lots of different athletes from all over the world, and seeing all the different reactions was quite funny.
‘The support was great – when you’re from here you get a real sense that the island is behind you, and then when you are there you see lots of flags everywhere and have people coming up to you.’
Badminton player Stuart Hardy described the support in Birmingham as ‘special’. He did not expect to see such a crowd at the airport ready to greet the team upon their return to the island.
‘We had such an amazing time at the games, the atmosphere was amazing and everybody was so nice.
‘All the volunteers were really friendly – they would come up to us and ask us how we were doing, what we were up to and things like that.
‘The closing ceremony was the perfect way to end it, there were 30,000 people there cheering everyone on.’
Many of the local representatives, including silver medallist Lucy Beere, had already come back to the island days prior in an effort to reduce any risk of Covid spreading at the Birmingham games.
