Commonwealth Games: Too old to play? Not here.
| New Delhi
Not many international athletes can say they picked up their sport at age 60. Don Batiste, now an experienced 73-year-old, is representing the island of Guernsey in "lawn bowls" at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
That last sentence encapsulates the sheer novelty and surprising inclusiveness found at this quadrennial sporting event.
Guernsey is a small island between England and France and, as a British protectorate, competes under its own flag in this championship of historically British-tied territories. And lawn bowls is a sport similar to bocce where you toss balls across a green in an effort to come closest to a target ball known as a jack.
IN PICTURES: Commonwealth Games 2010
By allowing autonomous islands like Guernsey to compete, and by including less taxing sports like lawn bowls, the Commonwealth Games give a sporting chance to athletes like Mr. Batiste who may never be Olympians but still have the competitive spirit.
“When I was younger I played a lot of football and cricket. When I [reached] my 60s I went to the gym, and that keeps me quite fit and I can compete with youngsters. There’s no reason people my age – if they are reasonably fit – couldn’t do the same,” says Batiste, a trim 176-pound, 5-foot-8 man who shrugs off playing alongside men in their 20s.
Batiste isn’t even the senior most athlete at the games. That distinction goes to Nelson Simons, a 78-year-old shooter from Bermuda. And Gerald Reive, a lawn bowler from the Falkland Islands is also a few months older than Batiste.
At the lawn bowls competition grounds in New Delhi a fair number of gray hairs poke out from under baseball caps. Willie Wood, a 72-year-old bowler from Scotland, is competing in his eighth Commonwealth Games.
“I started when I was 12. I lived in a little village and live in the same place yet and there’s nothing to do. I just decided to take up the bowls,” says Mr. Wood. “I’ve been all over the world – I wouldn’t have had that if I hadn’t taken the game up.”
He says that at his age “you’re supposed to take a back seat,” but he has fought to stay out front by working hard on his delivery.
While the heaviest ball only weighs about 3.5 pounds, Wood says it takes some stamina to play a set of three games.
“I don’t feel any more tired than the younger ones. They probably are more tired than me at the end of the day – I’m not carrying any weight, which helps,” says Wood, referring to the round waistlines on some of his younger competitors.
Batiste picked up the game when he worked as a caretaker at a school. A couple of the young lads, he says, introduced him to the game, which seemed like a good hobby as he faced retirement at 65.
“My wife, as well, bowls. So it’s something for us to do together,” he says.
He says he never expected the hobby would take him to New Delhi, but he’s proud to represent Guernsey, an island of little more than 60,000 people with its own Parliament and money.
“It’s very good for the island to have people compete against these bigger countries, and I think we have proved we can hold our own,” he says.
So far, the competitions across all the sports have gone fairly smoothly – minus some bird droppings in the swimming pool – adding to the sense of relief among Indians after a series of problems in the run-up to the games.
However, empty seats in the stands have caused concern among the organizers, who announced this morning that they are considering offering free admittance to schoolchildren in the city.
“We’ve sold over 6 lakhs [600,000] tickets. It will pick up more,” said Suresh Kalmadi, the chairman of the Organizing Committee for the Delhi games.
The sporty Australians are taking home most of the loot with 21 medals so far, including eight golds. Team India is in third place, after England, with eight medals. India won two golds and two silvers in shooting events, and two silvers and two bronzes in weight lifting.
Batiste has at least seven more matches ahead of him at these games. He says he may even compete at the next Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.
“I’ll be 77 – you never know,” says Batiste, enjoying the shade after a match Tuesday in the near 100-degree F. Delhi sun. “It’s the heat that takes it out of you.”
