Games a dream come true for Commonwealth committee vice-chair Louise Martin

The 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow was the realisation of a dream for the organising committee’s vice-chair Louise Martin.

Martin, who is also chair of Sport Scotland, is a former athlete turned sports administrator who represented Scotland as a swimmer at the 1962 Games in Perth, Australia.

She was also the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at last month’s Sunday Times and Sky Sportswomen of the Year Awards for her contribution to sport over the last 50 years.

“You’ve no idea what it was like, it was a dream come true,” Martin told Sky Sports. “We dared to dream and it came true in August this year. It was surreal. The whole thing was worth its weight in gold and I’d do it all over again. 

“When we set out on the journey we knew what we wanted to deliver for the athletes at the Commonwealth Games. We had to make sure everybody bought into our vision regardless of whether it was government, city council, Commonwealth Games Scotland or the Commonwealth Games Federation.

“Everybody had to buy into it because the minute one body fell out of line the whole thing would have fallen apart. But we got them all working together, we stayed true to ourselves the whole way through and that’s how we delivered such a fantastic Games.

“It was one big team effort and the jigsaw all came together.”

The budget for Glasgow 2014 was £472m excluding security costs, with an additional £66m set aside for contingency funding.

“We delivered the Games under budget and we actually gave back all the contingency funding,” Martin added.

“We didn’t think it would come in under budget but we were prudent and we had a lot of good people in the team. Everybody worked hard to deliver what they needed to deliver.”

Martin is keen to continue in the same vein and is working towards ensuring the next Commonwealth Games is a successful one for Scotland.

“The Commonwealth games means everything to me. It’s my family, I love it,” she said.

“As chair of Sport Scotland one of my roles is to ensure my high performance team really work with all the athletes in the build-up to 2018.

“I hope I’ll still be there when they go down to the Gold Coast in 2018. Our biggest challenge will be to beat our away games tally that we achieved in Melbourne. That will be hard but we can do it.”