A day which started with the arrival of the first batch of English athletes for the Commonwealth Games brought more good news for the beleaguered Organising Committee as Australia, New Zealand and Canada all confirmed participation in the October 3 to 14 event on Friday after a large-scale clean-up operation by the Delhi

government to improve conditions at the Games Village. The Village had been described as “filthy and uninhabitable” by the chefs de mission of the visiting teams earlier in the week.
The English athletes who arrived on Friday, however, preferred to stay at five-star hotels and wait for their accommodation at the Games Village to be cleaned and made ready to move in.
Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit was at the Games Village on Friday to ensure things got back on track and was sufficiently pleased with the progress. “The situation is much better now... the workers will work throughout the night and make sure everything happens on time,” she said. “The residential towers are much cleaner now after professional people like the Five-Star Hotel Association and others started looking after the housekeeping,” she added.
Ms Dikshit has appointed 34 senior administrators, one for each of the 34 towers, to make sure there are no further embarrassments.
Around 800 labourers have also been put to work at the Village to sanitise the flats which will house over 7,100 athletes from 71 countries. Plumbers and electricians are being deployed to fix snags in the residential towers.
Australia’s participation was in serious doubt after questions were raised about the conditions at the Games Village and the security scenario. But after visiting the Village on Friday morning, Australian Commonwealth Games Association chief Perry Crosswhite said, “We are quite happy with the Village and we are looking forward to the Games. The Australian contingent is coming.” “Absolutely, it’s thumbs up to the Games,” he said when asked about the team’s participation.
During a teleconference with Canadian media, Commonwealth Games Canada director of sport Scott Stevenson said, “Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit brought significant influence over the meeting and we felt significant confidence with what was offered. She has taken over all responsibility for the Village. Thirty-four senior city administrators, many of them engineers, have been given authority to get the job done and they have been assigned one per tower. We saw significant increases in the manpower provided and the quality of workmanship. Eight hundred labourers were brought in and the Village is starting to look a heck of a lot cleaner. We felt we turned a corner and do feel much better today.”
However, even as nations give the thumbs up to the event, there has been no letup in the spate of high-profile athletes opting out. Kiwi cycling world champion Greg Henderson and four British cyclists, including Olympic champion Geraint Thomas, have withdrawn from the quadrennial event citing various reasons.
Scotland, who had confirmed participation along with Wales on Thursday after initially delaying the departure of their athletes, will send their first batch of sportspersons on Saturday. The archery, lawn bowls, shooting, tennis and weightlifting teams due to travel on Saturday would continue as scheduled.
“There will undoubtedly be challenges ahead in Delhi, but we are confident that these can be effectively managed,” Commonwealth Games Scotland chairman Michael Cavanagh said in a statement.