Malis­sa Lara and Shal­iza Has­sanali

?Fresh on the heels of host­ing the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is mak­ing a bid to host the 2018 Com­mon­wealth Games. T&T is one of three coun­tries which has put for­ward bids to host the games. The oth­er two are Aus­tralia and Nige­ria. Suresh Kalma­di, chair­man of the Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee Com­mon­wealth Games, made the dis­clo­sure yes­ter­day dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain. Man­ning ex­pressed an in­ter­est yes­ter­day at a Sports Break­fast meet­ing which Kalma­di and dig­ni­taries rep­re­sent­ing the Com­mon­wealth na­tions at­tend­ed at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel.

"In his (Man­ning) speech he said he would like to be the host of the Com­mon­wealth Games 2018. He made a bid right there in front of all of us," Kalma­di said. Man­ning's bid fol­lows close­ly on the sum­mit in April and CHOGM this week­end. When asked what was the main cri­te­ri­on for host­ing the games, Kalma­di said a coun­try needs a strong fi­nan­cial back­ing. "Fi­nance for one. That's the main thing, and then your de­ter­mi­na­tion and will to cre­ate in­ter­na­tion­al class to the world," he said. Kalma­di said he was not sur­prised by Man­ning seek­ing an in­ter­est in the games and if he wins the bid, he will give him all the ad­vice and guid­ance.

"I am very hap­py for Man­ning be­cause the game is a unique one," he said. He al­so ad­vised Man­ning that should he win the bid he would have a lot of trav­el­ling to do. Asked if T&T would be able to pre­pare for an event of this mag­ni­tude, he said, "It de­pends on your gov­ern­ment. If they are ready to come for­ward or not." The 2010 games, to be held in Del­hi, In­dia next Oc­to­ber, has al­ready cost In­dia's gov­ern­ment US $2 bil­lion. The event is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate 2.5 mil­lion jobs and will see more than 100,000 tourists grac­ing In­dia's shores.

The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) in 2008 had giv­en some thought to host­ing the Com­mon­wealth Games, said sec­re­tary gen­er­al Bri­an Lewis. "Our in­ten­tion was to en­gage dis­cus­sion with Sport Min­is­ter Gary Hunt and the Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing the Caribbean Games." T&T with­drew from host­ing the Games this year as a re­sult of the H1N1virus. Un­able to give the cost of host­ing the Games, Lewis said to win a bid was not cheap. "If the Prime Min­is­ter is of the view it is some­thing he would like to ex­plore, I would think the TTOC would like to have some dis­cus­sion with him."