Sport and identity in Wales are usually reduced to the binary of two balls – one round, one oval. In the aftermath of Welsh football’s joyous qualification for the World Cup and in the preamble to the frankly terrifying prospect of a South African test series for a Welsh rugby team that couldn’t even beat Italy, the identity debate has even more bite than usual.
But in seeking that sense of pride, nationhood and cultural comfort that comes with vicarious sporting identification, let’s not forget the other Welsh team. This week saw the announcement of the bulk of the Welsh Commonwealth Games athletes who will fly the flag with as much fervour as Gareth Bale and Alun Wyn as they compete in Birmingham this summer.
Selection of 106 competitors across 11 sports, including swimming, athletics, cycling, triathlon, boxing, judo, wrestling, squash and lawn bowels was confirmed bringing Team Wales tally up to 126. They join the 23 athletes announced earlier this year for table tennis, para table tennis, para swimming, para lawn bowls, weightlifting and paratriathlon. And when the remaining selections for rugby, hockey, netball and gymnastics are made in the coming weeks, Team Wales will have a total of 199 athletes competing across 15 sports – with the number of women just pipping the men, 100 to 99. You can get more sports news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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There are faces old and new – Paralympic champion Aled Sion Davies returns, as does Carmarthen’s bowls queen Anwen Butten, who will be competing in her sixth Commonwealth Games a month before she celebrates her 50th birthday.
Porthmadog swimmer Medi Harris will be making her senior debut after winning silver and bronze as a 14-year-old in the Commonwealth Youth Games in Bahamas in 2017. Anna Hursey (table tennis) and Aidan Heslop (diving) are already teenage veterans after making their debuts for Wales on the Gold Coast as an 11-year-old and 15-year-old respectively.
For some it will be a family affair. There are four sets of siblings in the team: Joe and Hannah Brier (athletics), Ioan and Garan Croft (boxing), Tesni and Emyr Evans (squash) and Megan and Elinor Barker (cycling). Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European gold medallist Elinor rejoins the team within four months of the birth of baby son Nico.
There’s a return for another multi-decorated icon of the track – Tour de France, Olympic, World and Commonwealth champion Geraint Thomas is back in the Welsh jersey for the first time since topping the podium in Glasgow 2014.
Rhys Jones will make history as the first paratriathlete for Team Wales at a Commonwealth Games.
And Wales itself has a rich history as one of just six nations who have been there in this global multi-sport event from the very beginning, competing in every Games since the inaugural event in Hamilton, Canada in 1930.
The handful of Welsh athletes who featured in that first Games bunked up in a school next to the stadium, sleeping two dozen to a classroom.
Eleven countries sent 400 competitors to take part in six sports - athletics; boxing; lawn bowls; rowing; swimming and wrestling. And a Welshman – Reg Thomas – would win a gold medal. There was just one problem. He was competing for England.
Born in Pembroke Dock, Reg Thomas was a middle-distance athlete who ran into an eligibility furore at the peak of his career. “He was in the RAF as an apprentice,” explains sports journalist and historian Rob Cole. “He competed in the Welsh championships in 1929 but somehow got regarded as being English because he was competing for an English club and was in the RAF so they damn well picked him. So off goes Reg to Hamilton as favourite to win the 880 yards and the mile. He wins a silver in the 880 yards and then goes on to the mile and wins gold.
“He ran in the Olympic Games in 1928 and ran again in 1932 and we consider him to be a Welsh Olympian but unfortunately there he is in the record books having competed for England alongside other Welsh-qualified athletes and sportsmen at those initial games.”
It was left to a Welsh woman to ensure Wales did not return empty handed. Of the six sports on the schedule in 1930, women were only allowed to compete in the pool. So it was fortunate that the Welsh team included one of the greatest female swimmers in the world.
Valerie Davies was born in Cardiff in 1912 and, as she recalled in an interview towards the end of her life, lived in a part of the city that solved the swimmer’s problem of where to train. “In Cardiff at that time they only had a 20-yard pool so most of my training was done in Roath Park Lake, which I lived just beside. There was a ladies’ end and a gentlemen’s end and never the twain shall meet!”
Valerie, who died in 2001, claimed her place in history as Wales’s first Commonwealth Games medallist, winning three medals - two silvers in the 100 yards backstroke and 400 yards freestyle, and a bronze in the 100 yards freestyle. In Los Angeles in 1932 she would add two Olympic bronzes to her medal haul and experience a glamour that was a long way from Roath Park.
“All the film stars would come to the stadium. There was so much going on as well as the Olympics - so much to do and see. We had a big dinner party with people like Gary Cooper. It was very exciting because that was the heyday of Hollywood.”
A similarly far-flung adventure awaited the six-strong Welsh team of 1938 who sailed to the other side of the world – via Gibraltar, Rome, Bombay and Calcutta – to Sydney, Australia. Not that they would experience any luxury – or even moderate comfort - when they got there.
Team captain Jim Alford had to sort out his own digs. He won Wales’s first ever athletics gold after spending the night before his mile final in a tent pitched in a cow field next to the track.
By the time Lynn “The Leap” Davies and the late former Olympic sprinter and Welsh team captain Ron Jones were competing in the Commonwealths, they were crossing the world on 20-hour plane journeys rather than six-week ocean voyages. But some aspects of the athletic experience were still pretty basic.
I once interviewed the pair on their memories of competing for Wales and they had hilarious recollections of their rather rudimentary digs at the 1966 games in Jamaica – windowless student rooms with a fetching wall-covering of swatted flies. And when not squaring up to below-par accommodation there was the added obstacle of a rectangular training track.
“We told them we weren’t used to running around right angles,” Ron recalled with a chuckle. His first heat was also hampered by some last-minute finishing touches to the track. “I was told to get on my marks but I looked down my lane and all I could see was a large backside – somebody was still painting the lines!”
Lynn Davies’s long jump track, meanwhile, had been turned to slurry by over-enthusiastic irrigation. After several frustrating hours of waiting to compete while the emergency steamroller was brought on to the runway, he finally had his chance to go for gold. If the conditions had hampered his preparation, the sound of Welsh voices spurred him on. “In the crowd there were 120 Welsh supporters,” Lynn remembers. “And as the competition went on they could see I was struggling a bit so they started to sing. I’d never experienced that before in a major championships. They’d chartered a flight to Jamaica and it was great to hear them. They certainly lifted me and I managed to win the title out there.”
Lynn says he cherishes his Commonwealth title as much as his Olympic gold. His passion for athletics was fired by his experience as a teenage spectator when the Games came to Cardiff in 1958, as Wales proved itself to be an outstanding sporting host. “It was a great thrill and a privilege,” he recalls. “I was a 15-year-old schoolboy brought up on rugby and soccer in Nantymoel and to come to the Arms Park and see that bright red six lane cinder track and to watch great athletes like Herb Elliot really inspired me. It was my first big experience of top-class athletics and one of the greatest sporting events ever held in Wales.”
My father was there in the crowd in 1958 too, wearing a Swansea University green blazer that got him continually mistaken for a member of the South African team. We celebrated his 70th birthday at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and also enjoyed our trip to Glasgow in 2014 to cheer on Team Wales.
The supporting experience feels a precious one at a Commonwealth Games. Unlike football and rugby, there are few opportunities to fly the dragon rather than the Union Jack for our elite sportsmen and women. And imagine how much it is valued by the athletes themselves to top the podium to the sound of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau rather than God Save the Queen.
Having interviewed scores of Welsh Commonwealth Games competitors over the years, the anthem moment is the experience they particularly treasure. Robert Morgan, the Bridgend diver who plunged into Commonwealth glory in the 1990 Auckland games, wanted to eke out every second of his gold medal ceremony.
“That was the bit I wanted to go on, because that was the bit that was too quick,” he recalled with a wistful smile. “Walking up to the podium, receiving the medal…it just all went too fast. The fantastic feeling seeing the flag going up, hearing the anthem and belting it out. We’re all brought up with it, I’d sang it as a kid in the national stadium at the rugby, but it was lovely when it was just for me. I didn’t want that moment to end.”
So let’s extend the Red Wall to Birmingham this summer for the other Team Wales doing their best to do us proud.
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