AFTER initial hiccups, India did manage to pull off a successful Commonwealth Games and it should now look toward the Olympics, expressed The Hindu in an editorial published Sunday. Excerpts: Twenty-four hours before the opening ceremony, it looked as though Delhi had made a complete mess of the preparations for the Commonwealth Games. On Thursday, in front of 60,000 spectators, including chief guest President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, when the Commonwealth Games Federation president Michael Fennell declared, “Delhi, you have delivered a truly exceptional Games,” there was justifiable pride among Indians. Despite the shambolic build-up, the Organising Committee (OC) pulled it off in the end, overcoming seemingly insurmountable problems at the eleventh hour. Some of the venues, the Games Village, and the quality of food served came in for lavish praise from visiting athletes and officials. The tightest security ever experienced for a sports event in India might have caused some irritation among participants and spectators. But as Mr. Fennell pointed out, there could have been no compromise on this front. Defying predictions, the show went on with clockwork precision even when there were some organisational hiccups. But more than all this, what helped Indians put out of mind the chaos and tragi-comic mishaps witnessed during the run-up to the Games was the nation's unprecedented haul of 101 medals, including 38 gold. After the CWG success, the idea of bidding for the Olympics is likely to gain some traction. It would be unwise to rush into this venture without cleaning up the Indian Olympic Association and doing a cool appraisal of infrastructural and organisational capabilities and cost. __
