Preparations for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games are now well underway with recent months seeing several significant announcements from both Team Scotland and the Birmingham 2022 Organising Committee.

Team Scotland continues to make significant progress in our own Games preparations with lead General Team Management (GTM) staff recruited and now in place and Sport Team Managers for all 19 sports on the programme now confirmed.

Read more:

Lead Team Scotland Staff for Birmingham 2022 (GTM)

Sport Team Managers Appointed

Cricket and Hockey Team Managers Confirmed

Following the publication of the General Selection Policy in January, work is continuing with all sports, preparing sport specific selection standards to publish ahead of the selection window opening on 1 March 2021. To date seven sports (Athletics, Judo, Lawn Bowls, Rugby 7s, Squash, Triathlon and Wrestling) have published selection standards which can be viewed here:

Team Scotland Birmingham 2022 Team Selection

A number of site visits to Birmingham were held, in person in the start of the year and then remotely.  At the end of 2020, a virtual site visit between GTM and key Birmingham 2022 staff was held to examine planning preparations. We were reassured that planning is well on track and also examined the mitigations in place as a result of COVID-19 including how the changes in the international sporting schedule in 2020 and 2021 have impacted on Games scheduling.

These included a 24-hour change in start date and the Games will now begin on 28 July 2022, running through to 8 August 2022. The move ensures that Birmingham 2022 will now boast two full weekends of Commonwealth Sport whilst extending the rest and recovery period for athletes competing in the World Athletics Championships and avoiding a potential clash between the Opening Ceremony and the semi-finals of the UEFA Women’s Football Championships.

Another change was the announcement that athletes and team officials will be housed across three ‘campus’ villages at The University of Birmingham, The University of Warwick, and The NEC Hotel Campus in a move away from a main site Village at Perry Barr.

This new campus model will see 1,600 athletes and officials housed at the NEC Hotel Campus, 1,900 at The University of Warwick, and the principal village with 2,800 at The University of Birmingham. Track cyclists will continue to be based in London for the duration of their competition.

A number of sporting venues have also been revealed with Smithfield, with its impressive cityscape backdrop, unveiled as the chosen location to stage the 3×3 Basketball and Beach Volleyball competitions. Start and finish points for Road Cycling have also been released, with full routes to follow in due course. West Park in Wolverhampton will be the setting for the start and finish of the Time Trial, while the Road Race, will start and finish in St Nicholas Park in Warwick.

In October Birmingham 2022 organisers released the daily schedule, confirming which sports will be held on each of the 11 days of competition. The first day of competition on Friday 29 July is packed with an impressive 14 different sports and the action continues right through to the final day of the Games on Monday 8 August. The Games will finish with a flurry of medals, with Badminton, Diving, Hockey, Squash and Table Tennis all featuring before the Closing Ceremony brings Birmingham 2022 to a close the same evening.

The full medal event programme for the Games, detailing exactly which events will feature in each sport, and a more detailed version of the schedule, to include a session by session breakdown, will be unveiled in the coming months in 2021.

More information and a link to the full sport schedule can be found here:

Daily Sports Schedule Unveiled for Birmingham 2022

Moving into 2021 we look forward to completing the final selection policies and the selection period commencing in earnest with prospective athletes being able to fully access training facilities and competing on the world stage again, including many competing at the rescheduled Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo.