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The Interview
Katie Sadleir, Commonwealth Games: They are still relevant
00:23:01
Commonwealth Games CEO Katie Sadleir on why there are fewer sports in this year’s event
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Transcript61 lines
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Interviewer
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK
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Advertiser
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Manny Jasmy
Hello, I'm Manny Jasmy, BBC World Service Sport presenter and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC People shaping our world from all over the world.
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Advertiser
I want to get freedom.
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Katie Sadlier
I like that.
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Advertiser
Freedom.
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Katie Sadlier
A gender equal world would be a better world for men too. We need this is fire. We need healing. We need trust.
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Advertiser
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Katie Sadlier
This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end.
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Manny Jasmy
For this interview I met Katie Sadlier, CEO of the Commonwealth Games. Born to an Australian father and a Scottish mother, then raised in Canada before settling in New Zealand, Sadlea called herself a Commonwealth kid. She got involved in synchronized swimming, or artistic swimming as it's now called at a young age and her first major competitions were were the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games. Soon after you're going to hear about her journey from the water to the boardroom and then to becoming head of the Commonwealth Games. The 23rd edition of the sporting event kicks off at the end of July in Glasgow, Scotland. The Australian state of Victoria was supposed to be this year's host, but pulled out suddenly in 2023 saying it had become too expensive. Sadlier explains why a decision to reduce the size of the Games has been integral to their survival.
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Katie Sadlier
It had grown to be quite an expensive event, but we had launched a new strategy basically three weeks before the Australians came and withdrew the Games and one of the key things in that long term strategy was that we wanted to take the Commonwealth Games around the Commonwealth. Our members wanted to host the Games and because of the size and the scale of the event, that was not possible.
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Manny Jasmy
Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Katie Sadlea.
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Katie Sadlier
Having family all over the world at a really early age gave me a really good insight to thinking differently about cultures and things like that. We were Always going to visit a grandparent somewhere. And whilst I was born in Scotland, I lived my high school years up till the end of my high school in Canada. We were either popping down to Perth, which is where my father was from, to catch up with my grandparents there, or across to Glasgow, which is where my mother was from. So that's quite ironic with the Games around the corner. But was I destined to do this job? I'm not sure that I was, but I love it. I absolutely love what I do.
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Interviewer
When were you bitten by the sport bug?
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Katie Sadlier
Very early on. My parents were very, very keen that we tried things. So, you know, not sort of specializing too early, thinking about my talent, ID knowledge, but tried everything from ice skating, figure skating through to gymnastics, all sorts of things. And then we got involved in aquatic sports and, you know, at that stage, this kind of bug, it became, it became more than just a, let's just try it and sign on for 12 sessions and see what you can do next season. I became quite excited about the potential of being a very young synchronized swimmer because my sister was a synchronized swimmer as well. And so, you know, I saw her traveling around the country and me being left behind with my brother and my dad and thought, I want to do this too. So I was about 12.
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Interviewer
And you. Yes. And you were doing 35 hours a week, I understand. At that age, what were your friends doing?
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Katie Sadlier
They never smelled like chlorine, that's all I can say as I, you know, I used to swim in the morning twice a day before school and after school and I lived in Coquitlam in Vancouver and. And my club that we were training in was, was right downtown, so it was about a 40 minute drive, so early morning starts and my friends were doing everything other than that bar. My friends that were part of my swimming community and I've got some of the people that I swam with because it was a team sport, have been lifelong friends.
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Interviewer
And you won a bronze medal at your first Commonwealth Games in 1986. How did that achievement feel after all
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Manny Jasmy
of your hard work and dedication?
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Katie Sadlier
It was so special. My mom, who came from Glasgow, came from a family of nine, so a huge family and a lot of them were still in Scotland. So although I was, my sister and I were living in New Zealand at the time. My mum came back to Scotland with us and we had a whole family watching the Commonwealth Games. You know, there's something special about standing on that podium. You know, it wasn't the gold medal, but it was just that kind of whole sense of Achievement. And, you know, it was two years after my sister and I had competed together at the Olympics in 1984, to come to Scotland, to be where somewhere which was so special for my mum. And I thought about all the sort of sacrifices that she'd put into enabling me to do, to do what I was able to achieve.
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Interviewer
What are your memories just of the environment of the Commonwealth games and the 84 Olympics, the village athletes from all over the world. What was that like?
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Katie Sadlier
I am so fortunate that I've had jobs that have kept me close to the Olympic and Commonwealth Games movement. I, you know, I've attended eight Commonwealth Games now and four Olympic Games really, really, like in a variety of capacities. But the ones that you actually compete in, they're very, very special. And although, you know, you know, I was thinking about some of the issues that are going on around the world at the moment, you know, both those Games that I competed in were boycott games for a variety of reasons. And in Edinburgh, we were in a situation where the Caribbean and the Africans had boycott the Games because of Margaret Thatcher's policies on economic sanctions in South Africa. So, you know, it got me to grow up quickly and understand that sport is really important, but it does have implications beyond sport.
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Interviewer
Then you decided to stop swimming and move from the water into the boardroom to be an administrator at Swim New Zealand in your early 20s. Why did that appeal to you at such a young age?
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Katie Sadlier
I went to the Olympics in 1984 and I think that at that Games there in particular, I decided that I'd quite like to have a volunteer career in sport. And I kind of visualized myself as maybe being a chef de mission at some stage. I like that kind of leadership role and how you created the environment for other athletes. And so I decided that I would study in sport and did an undergraduate in sports management in Christchurch in New Zealand. And then I went on to do a master's in sports management. And I guess whilst I was doing that, I was in a sport that was really developing still in swimming in New Zealand at that stage, you had a New Zealand Aquatics Board, so each of the disciplines were represented on the swimming board and there was an opportunity for a president to, to get involved. So I became the president of New Zealand Synchronized Swimming and it went directly to be an administrator on that board. You know, I was studying sports, so it was quite a natural thing for me. I was young and so I had a lot to learn about some of the, some of the way of governing a national governing body. But I had Some really good mentors.
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Interviewer
It was you and seven men on the board. Was it daunting to be outnumbered in that way?
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Katie Sadlier
Well, it became a bit of the story of my life for quite some time in terms of my career. I mean, I, you know, I spent a considerable amount of time in my sporting career managing and leading high performance. And that was very, very male dominated. I mean, I think I approached it, I was probably a bit cheeky. I was young. I remember going to these board meetings on a weekend and I used to think, why on earth are these people in an inside room all dressed up in their blazers with their fancy pockets, et cetera, et cetera, Very much officialdom. And I was this young thing thinking, I'm just gonna rock up there with my tracksuit. But, you know, I learned a lot from that first sport and from the people that I worked alongside and we did some really good things.
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Interviewer
When he became the chief executive of Commonwealth Sport in 2021, what was your message at a time when the relevance of the Commonwealth Games was doubted by many people?
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Katie Sadlier
Well, I believe in the Commonwealth movement. I believed in it then and I believe in it now. And it has played such an incredibly important part of my life personally. You know, I mentioned I'd been to eight Commonwealth Games in a variety of capacities of supporting other athletes to get there. And in that capacity, I knew about the potential and the real critical role that the Commonwealth plays in athletes pathways. So from my perspective, I'm the kind of person, if someone says to me, you know, this is irrelevant, I was going to jump up and down and demonstrate how much it is not.
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Interviewer
Because.
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Katie Sadlier
Because the Commonwealth Games provides an opportunity for young talent to be exposed to multi games events at a really early age before they become household names. And there's plenty of examples of that. But it's more than that. You know, when I think of my time at the Olympics and the Commonwealths, the Commonwealth Network of 74 territories and countries support each other as a family in terms of issues that they may be facing. It brings people together from small and large countries with an equal voice to discuss things that are important.
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Manny Jasmy
You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.
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Katie Sadlier
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Manny Jasmy
I'm Manny Jasmy and I'm in conversation with the CEO of the Commonwealth Games, Katie Sadlier. When Katie walked into the studio, the first thing she said to me was,
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Interviewer
we've got you next week.
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Manny Jasmy
To be honest, I'd been wondering how to bring up the topic myself, so I knew what she was talking about, which was her team New Zealand playing my team Iran in our first World cup match. So we lapsed into a conversation about football. She told me how she knew the father of one of the New Zealand players. I told her about just some of the challenges faced by the Iran team. But eventually, as you've been hearing, we did get round to talking about the Commonwealth Games. So let's return to that conversation with Katie Sadlier.
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Interviewer
This year's games are in Glasgow, 12 years after they were last there, but they weren't meant to be there because that was the Australian state of Victoria who were supposed to be the hosts. But then they pulled out suddenly in 2023. What do you remember of that moment? Why did they pull out and how did you find out about it?
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Katie Sadlier
Fair to say it's a day that I will never forget in my professional career. Yeah, not in a good way, I guess. Well, it was a challenge. It certainly was a challenge for me as a professional, particularly given I was on the board of the Victorian Games at the time and did not. No one on the board saw this coming. Why they say they came out of the games was because it had grown too expensive. There's probably other reasons. There's plenty of other reasons. There were some decisions that were made by the State of Victoria in how they wanted to deliver the games, which did cost costs to escalate, but not to the extent that was proposed. In the reason for the blowout, I was given seven hours notice and I remember very much sitting in a room with Dame Louise Martin, who was the president at the time, in our offices in Storygate in London and we had two visitors from the Victorian government who had come to to visit. We did not actually understand what they were coming for, who sat down in front of me and basically said that in seven hours time Dan Andrews was going to Tell the State of Australia that they were pulling out of the Games. What I did at that point in time was say to them that there was no provision in the contract for them to do this. You know, they did say to me, oh, you might be in a bit of a shock, but this is the news we have for you. I said, there's no provision in the contract for you to do this. I suggest that you shut your computers down and go away and come back in two to three hours when I have our lawyers with us, when we can talk about this in a more serious way. So it was a day of significant leadership responsibilities for myself and for the President in terms of making sure that our membership knew what was going on as quickly as possible. So they didn't wake up, particularly the Australians. They didn't wake up at seven o' clock in the morning and hear Dan Andrews state that he was pulling out of the Games.
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Interviewer
Yeah, that's the Premier of Victoria who said, I've, I have to make a lot of very difficult decisions. This isn't one of them. Did you think that was it for the Games?
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Katie Sadlier
No, absolutely not. You know, I mean, because I believed in the strength of the Commonwealth movement, I understand the importance of the Commonwealth in terms of athlete pathways. It was a rather large speed wobble that we needed to get through. But we had just come through an incredibly successful Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
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Interviewer
So that was very expensive. The British government paid for most of it and local government in Birmingham came up with the rest. I mean, is it realistic to think that, you know, other cities in the world can afford that much money to spend on a week and a half of sport?
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Katie Sadlier
No, that. The, the answer to that is that no, it is. It was, had grown to be quite an expensive event. But we had launched a new strategy basically three weeks before the Australians came and withdrew the Games. And one of the key things in that long term strategy was that we wanted to take the Commonwealth Games around the Commonwealth. Our members wanted to host the Games and because of the size and the scale of the event, that was not possible. It was bouncing back and forth between the UK and Australia. So we had already decided it was time to think about what do we need to do to create an event of a size that was sustainable and that we could take around the Commonwealth. We just needed to do a bit faster because we weren't thinking that Victoria was going to pull out. So what we did after that time was that we did spend time doing what we would call the Games reset, which was looking at what were the principles that needed to be put in place to enable the Commonwealth Games to go around the Commonwealth whilst at the same time find a replacement for 2026. And the result is we are going to be going to Glasgow very shortly to what is a bridge to the future for us in terms of the Commonwealth movement. We have brought a Games into something that is innovative and is sustainable. And already it has proven that the size and scale of what we will be delivering has been received incredibly attractively from many of our members. So the really exciting thing is that we went from a situation where all of a sudden we had no Games. Now we have a Games in Glasgow. Very shortly, we have a Youth Games in Malta, but we went through a bid process not long after awarding the Games, to have a situation where we had five of our members put up their hands saying, we believe in this new model. We would like to be considered for 2030. And we have now allocated, last year, Ahmedabad for the 2030 Games.
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Interviewer
This century, every single Commonwealth Games before Glasgow has had more sports around 17. It looks like all of the previous ones will have had more athletes than Glasgow. From the outside, it will look like an admission that the appeal of the Commonwealth Games has reduced. But do you think that this is a necessary reduction to keep the Games viable?
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Katie Sadlier
We see Glasgow and the innovation that's going to take place in Glasgow to develop an amazing event with 10 sports and six para sports as a bridge to the future. It is an event that will grow. So when you hit Ahmedabad, we will be back up at 17Sports. But 17Sports is a reduction from where we were going in terms of Victoria wanting to have 22 sports. So we needed to reset the Games.
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Interviewer
Clearly, not having America and China and most of the European countries does make it slightly more accessible to win medals. So, around the Commonwealth, for countries that aren't used to winning medals, how important is that?
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Katie Sadlier
That's very important. And it does. I mean, you know, we have a lot of small island states or some of those have absolutely amazing sporting stars, but we have a lot of small countries that would not necessarily get to an Olympic Games and they will get to a Commonwealth Games and the medals are, you know, shared around. Yes, you've got your sporting champions and the Australians and the Englands and the Scots, but they do have sporting heroes that are born and create that inspiration for those countries to get more and more young people involved in sport.
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Interviewer
What's harder, running the Commonwealth Games or competing in them?
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Katie Sadlier
Competing is very, very single focused. You're there, you're there. To do the business. You know, you've had a lot of people who supported you along the way and you're very nervous about this. When you come in and you're running the Commonwealth Games or overseeing it, clearly there's a chief executive Batty is doing and his team are doing a brilliant job. But you do have that wider responsibility of making sure that everything across a multitude of different sports and venues actually goes seamlessly well and that everyone has an amazing experience. So I probably say being the CEO is a little bit more nerve wracking than it was being an athlete.
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Interviewer
How do you think that the issue of mental health has changed from what it was when you were competing 40 years ago?
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Katie Sadlier
I'm not sure that it's changed as much as it's talked about more often, but there are more pressures in terms of commercial responsibilities, in terms of pressures that are put on young athletes to win and bring back medals. But what I also see at the same time is that in many of the countries that participate in the Games you have got really good support networks for people in terms of sports psychologists, in terms of training and education, for coaches to actually understand about the pressures that you put on athletes. And in terms of athletes helping them feel that they can compartmentalize better and deal with some of those additional pressures and stress. When I think about Glasgow and I think about the 3,000 athletes that are going to arrive, there will be pressures, but there will be excitement, there will be successes, there will be the opportunity to shine in front of fans and friends and I know that they'll all come away with a really good time.
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Interviewer
In terms of multi hosting, that's become a thing in sport to accommodate bigger competitions. The Football World cup is being co hosted by three countries for the first time. Is that a way of getting the Commonwealth Games to Africa? Because it's never been there.
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Katie Sadlier
Yes, we do want to get the Commonwealth Games and, or the Commonwealth Youth Games to Africa. It is, you know, Nigeria put forward a bid against Ahmedabad and on this occasion the bid, the 20, 30 games, went to Ahmedabad. But at this stage our board said we need to work with Africa to assist them, to actually help them realize their ambitions in a non exclusive way to host the Games. The Games reset work that we did on resetting the games had 10 principles. You know, one was about reducing the cost using existing facilities, the other was exploring co hosting opportunities. And I think that is a viable thing for the Commonwealth Games as long as it doesn't significantly increase the cost of delivery. So you need to sort of Balance
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Interviewer
it, I think, including Glasgow, seven of the last eight Commonwealth Games will have been held in Australia or Britain. Is there a case for you to say, look, whatever happens after 2030, we just can't keep going back to the old reliable stomping ground?
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Katie Sadlier
Well, what I would firstly say is that both the UK and Australia have been brilliant hosts. So all those Games, you know, they have been absolutely fantastic games that have got memories for all sorts of people around the Commonwealth. So not putting their ambitions aside, there will be more Games that take place in Australia and the uk. I know there will be. But we also know that the work that we've done on the reset has made several countries put up their hand and say, how about us?
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Interviewer
Because while the Commonwealth Games is great for the competitors, imagine how inspired people might be if it comes to their country.
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Katie Sadlier
Absolutely. You know, and I think one of the really special things I was, I did an interview the other day and someone asked me what are my really special memories of Birmingham? And it was my first time as the CEO in this role. And I said there were some amazing athlete performances. Absolutely. But the volunteers, and there's probably upward of 4,000 volunteers that participate in the Games and their stories. So it's more than just the athletes on the field of play, it's what it does to the communities, it's what it does to the volunteers, it is what it does to the economic development and legacy aspects, but it is far more than the athlete performing performances.
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Manny Jasmy
Thank you for listening to the interview. You'll find more in depth conversations on the interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with legendary musician Paul McCartney, AI, entrepreneur Kate Callett and acclaimed writer Maggie O'.
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Interviewer
Farrell.
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Manny Jasmy
Until next time. Bye for now.
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