Cover Story
2003 SPGOC Chair Looks Back At The Games
Keep numbers down, Robin Mitchell says
Finalise your games village very early and keep the number of sports manageable. Those are the suggestions of Doctor Robin Mitchell to any country wanting to host the South Pacific Games in the future. He should know, as he's chair of the 2003 South Pacific Games Organising Committee (SPGOC). He is also the president of FASANOC, the Fiji National Olympic Committee, and Secretary General of ONOC, the Oceania National Olympic Committee.
If that isn't enough, Mitchell is a practising medical doctor, who together with his wife and at least three other colleagues, run a very successful private practice in Suva. In fact, most if not all of his colleagues in the SPGOC 2003 were volunteers and came on board wearing more than one "hat." For instance, there was Atma Maharaj, director responsible for marketing. He was Team Fiji's chef de mission and runs his own IT consultancy and marketing agency.
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There's also Vidhya Lakhan, Air New Zealand's sales manager in Fiji. He's also the honorary secretary of FASANOC and director responsible for sports in the Suva Games. By the close of the 2003 Games, Lakhan was also elected president of the SPG Council.
A week after the close of the Suva Games, Mitchell and his committee were hoping the games would break-even, posting neither a profit nor a loss. The sales of games beds at the Games Village they hope would cut their losses. Otherwise, the Fiji Government would have to absorb the loss as it had promised in 1999 when Fiji won the bid to host the games. Mitchell said FASANOC may also have to take on part of the debt as well.
Here's extracts of Mitchell's interview:
Why do you think the 2003 Games delivered an athlete-focused, culturally enhancing games that showcased the Pacific at its best, as per your games statement?
"I think the main area was the level of competition, the facilities that were provided for that competition to take place and I think the very strong crowd support really created an atmosphere for quite a strong competition which is what sports is all about. I guess from our point of view, a well-presented competition from an athletes' point of view. In terms of the cultural contribution based on our mission statement, apart from the formal cultural programme, which is the opening and closing ceremonies, there was provision for featuring the culture of Fiji at Sukuna Park and at the trade show area, as well as the presence of overseas groups, some of whom were sponsored by the Alliance Francaise and others who had just come to be part of the games. So we had bands and cultural groups from Australia, the French Pacific, Hawaii, and they all added to the different cultural groups like the schools which raised money to come like Niusawa in Taveuni and Gau Secondary. In a sense, we were able to show off the cultures of Fiji to the region which in essence is the region's cultures because so many different groups are now residents of Fiji. The Pacific at its best was all of that, the sporting side, the cultural side and the open, friendliness of everybody, and Suva responded to that."
So what did SPGOC do right in the games?
"I think the main factor was the total involvement of all stakeholders. The fact that they all worked closely together helped us deliver on issues like facilities and on sports. We got the municipality of Suva involved with a very active mayor and his council, and of course, with athletes trying to get into what's the biggest team ever. I think the fact that all the stakeholders really pitched in and worked closely together helped us realise our objectives. In some of the South Pacific Games in the past, we have the organising committee which is made up of NGOs not getting on well with the government, and there's been problems in terms of delivery in some aspects of the games. We have a close working relationship with all of the groups and I think that contributed a lot to the success of the games."
What could we have done better?
"Essentially, the same problems that dogged organising committees. One of the main features we introduced here was a new software technology that was being developed by the Oceania National Olympic Committee for the region. We accelerated the process because when we looked at the cost of getting in established software from Manchester, from the Olympic Games, the cost was really very, very high, just to license it. So in the very short timeframe, working together with Sportingpulse, of Melbourne, we produced a membership data base which produced accreditation and from that produced the results service at very little cost to SPG.
But what that meant was that we were testing a fairly new system. Generally it worked well. The accreditation side worked well for athletes and officials, but the membership data base for volunteers didn't work that well. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the Fiji side done earlier because it was hard to get the different volunteer groups to come and register. We were hoping to finish it all by the end of May. That didn't happen. So at that end, we had a bottleneck of demands on accreditation, where you were trying to push through the accreditation of the workforce but at the same time accredit the overseas people.
"Transport is always a difficult problem even in the Olympics. When I listened to all the problems that were coming up, they were no different from the problems we talked about in Manchester, in Sydney. The fact that Suva was well positioned by size and proximity, the transport problem solved itself fairly quickly once we were able to give more independence to the teams. Those were the two main areas.
"One of the areas that always causes problems in a game is the games village and food. But our games village did very well, despite the fact that we had to use schools and the key there was to have comfortable beds, which were recognised by some athletes as Sydney (Olympics) based. They had comfortable accommodation and the food was varied to allow for all the different nationalities that USP caters for normally, you know, it caters for the region as a whole. So in terms of the good points, I think the village really took the heat off because if that was a problem, then it would have taken us longer to get over the issues that normally crop up."
On the games village, would you have gone for a totally new village altogether?
"In think within the timeframe we had which was basically post-coup, post-2000, USP was the ideal place because of its proximity to majority of the venues. In fact, it proved itself during the games with athletes being able to walk to and from the venues. Very early on in the bid, in 1998 to 1999, we had looked at the possibility of building condominiums. This was quite attractive to USP because they were running short of accommodation. They didn't have the money at the time to build the facilities, but they were happy to use it afterwards by allowing their students to stay there. That was one of the options we put in our bid. At that time, we looked at the property along Muanikau Road-Queen Elizabeth Drive which is now earmarked for SPC and SOPAC. We looked at the area behind Cost-U-Less.
When you are dealing with land issues and multiple ownership, it gets difficult. Then when the coup happened, our timeframe telescoped. We went back to the idea then of just using USP. At that time we wanted to use USP only but occupational health and safety requirements were such that we were only able to cater for half. So we went to Veiuto/Suva Grammar Schools complex and then Cathedral came on board. In fact that relieved a lot of the pressure and also made it easier to cope with the big teams‹New Caledonia, Fiji, and PNG‹ who stayed in those particular schools. In the end, it worked out well but probably a bit more expensive. My advise to Samoa would be to negotiate your village very early on so that you can then concentrate on planning your sport."
Security was a big issue before the games, but it more-or-less became a non-issue by the time the games ended.
"I think a lot of people were not aware that Fiji at that time was on level 2 security. The airports were at that level. There were also feedback from the region that post-Bali, I wouldn't say Fiji was a target, but it was a possible target because of the number of Australian visitors who were coming to our shores.
"The police in particular, some of them had worked at the Sydney Olympic Games and working with their partners, put in place a fairly comprehensive plan and they tried to work within the budget they were ultimately given. They had fortunately cooperation from regional neighbours and got some of the equipment. I think despite it being very visible at the start of the games, it was probably the first time we had that type of security with road blockage to allow for pedestrian malls."
What other lessons you think Samoa could take onboard for 2007?
"I think the reality of the SPG is that the games Suva hosted was as big as Manchester with only a very small fraction of the resources that Manchester had.
"So for Samoa, I would suggest they have fewer of the team events, you know we had four versions of rugby in our initial proposal: rugby league, rugby union, rugby sevens, touch rugby, and add to that the men's and women's components and the mixed component just made that small group quite a big number of people.
"Our recommendation to the SPG Council is to increase the number of compulsory sports, so people know well in advance which sports are on the programme so they could prepare better. They need to work on the core areas of an organisation, which are accommodation, transport and sporting facilities because that's what the games are all about."
The 2003 Games have given Fiji state of the art sporting facilities. How could we utilise these so they don't turn into white elephants?
"I understand the Fiji Sports Council which is going to maintain all those facilities is planning another workshop to look at how best to utilise these facilities. One would be to increase community participation by making them affordable to the community and perhaps getting housewives and schools to use the facilities during the day and also to maintain the focus on the facilities to host as many regional or international competitions as possible. I noted from the preliminary report of table tennis that they are recommending that based on the success of table tennis, we should look at bidding for the world table tennis circuit. I think some of our federations are already in the process of bidding for regional or world championships.
"The other part that goes with that is if we want to aim higher than SPG, then we need to look at improved facilities for Suva in terms of hotel accommodation. With the (sporting) facilities we have, we can quite successfully host a Commonwealth Games. But we don't have enough of the up-market accommodation to cater for the people that would come. We would be dealing with bigger number of VIPs and international federations as well as a bigger media contingent that would demand more of the services that we don't have."
How can we make the games more inclusive and that it won't force one or two of these smaller countries to drop away disillusioned either because they can't afford to participate or there's just no hope of them winning a medal?
"I think more countries won medals in the Suva Games. Only Tuvalu and the Marshalls missed out. Marshalls were unfortunate because their top sprinter just missed out on a medal.
"It would have changed the picture. Tuvalu has not had much regional or international competitions unlike their neighbours Kiribati, who has been going to the Micronesian Games and it's starting to show that if you want to win medals at whatever level, SPG or Commonwealth, you've got to get out of your country to compete.
"I think Tuvalu is now determined to pursue IOC membership so come Palau or come Apia, perhaps they too will feature on the medal table. Tokelau came and won medals and I don't know whether they had been to the games before or not. I think a feature of the Suva Games was that more countries won medals. There was greater spread at the top level in terms of the number of medals. PNG, Tahiti and Fiji got much better than they have done for quite a while and at the lower level you have countries like Federated States of Micronesia doing very well and almost challenging Guam."
