Katie Sadleir, Commonwealth Games: They are still relevant

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1:00Katie Sadleir:BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. I want to get freedom. I like that freedom.

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1:21Katie Sadleir:don't really, they don't care what governments do. This is a war. The first thing that we want is the word to end. For this interview, I met Katie Sadlia, CEO of the Commonwealth Games. Born to an Australian father and a Scottish mother, then raised in Canada before settling in New Zealand, Sadlia called herself a Commonwealth kid. She got involved in synchronised swimming, or artistic swimming as it's now called, at a young age and her first major competitions were the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games soon after. You're going to hear about her journey from the water to the boardroom and then to becoming head of the Commonwealth Games.

2:08Katie Sadleir:The 23rd edition of the sporting event kicks off at the end of July in Glasgow, Scotland. The Australian state of Victoria was supposed to be this year's host, but pulled out suddenly in 2023, saying it had become too expensive. Sadlia explains why a decision to reduce the size of the Games has been integral to their survival.

2:31Mani Djazmi:It had grown to be quite an expensive event, but we had launched a new strategy basically three weeks before the Australians came and withdrew out of the Games. And one of the key things in that long-term strategy was that we wanted to take the Commonwealth Games around the Commonwealth. Our members wanted to host the Games and because of the size and the scale of the event that was not possible.

2:59Katie Sadleir:Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Katie Sadlia.

3:05Mani Djazmi:Having family all over the world at a really early age gave me a really good insight to thinking differently about cultures and things like that. You're always going to visit a grandparents somewhere. And whilst I was born in Scotland, I lived my high school years up till the end of my high school in Canada. We were either popping down to Perth, which is where my father was from, to catch up with my grandparents there or across to Glasgow, which is where my mother was from. So that's quite ironic with the games around the corner. But was I destined to do this job? I'm not sure that I was, but I love it.

3:38Mani Djazmi:I absolutely love what I do.

3:40Katie Sadleir:When were you bitten by the sport bug?

3:42Mani Djazmi:Very early on, my parents were very, very keen that we tried things. So, you know, not sort of specializing too early, thinking about my talent ID knowledge, but tried everything from ice skating, figure skating through to gymnastics, all sorts of things. And then we got involved in aquatic sports. And, you know, at that stage, this kind of bug, it became more than just a, let's just try it and sign on for 12 sessions and see what you can do next season. I became quite excited about the potential of being a very young synchronized swimmer because my sister was a synchronized swimmer as well. And so, you know, I saw her traveling around the country and me being left behind with my brother and my dad and thought, I want to do this too.

4:26Mani Djazmi:So I was about 12.

4:28Katie Sadleir:Yes, and you were doing 35 hours a week, I understand, at that age. What were your friends doing?

4:34Mani Djazmi:They never smelled like chlorine, that's all I can say. I used to swim in the morning twice a day before school and after school. And I lived in Coquitlam in Vancouver. And my club that we were training in was right downtown. So it was about a 40-minute drive. So early morning starts. And my friends were doing everything other than that, bar my friends that were part of my swimming community. And I've got some of the people that I swam with, because it was a team sport, have been lifelong friends.

5:01Katie Sadleir:And you won a bronze medal at your first Commonwealth Games in 1986. How did that achievement feel after all of your hard work and dedication?

5:11Mani Djazmi:It was so special. My mum, who came from Glasgow, came from a family of nine. So a huge family and a lot of them were still in Scotland. So although I was my sister and I were living in New Zealand at the time, my mum came back to Scotland with us and we had a whole family watching the Commonwealth Games. You know, there's something special about standing on that podium. You know, it wasn't the gold medal, but it was just that kind of whole sense of achievement. And, you know, it was two years after my sister and I had competed together at the Olympics in 1984 to come to Scotland to be somewhere which was so special for my mum.

5:48And I thought about all the sort of sacrifices that she put into enabling me to do what I was able to achieve.

5:55Katie Sadleir:What are your memories just of the environment of the Commonwealth Games and the 84 Olympics, the village athletes from all over the world? What was that like?

6:07Mani Djazmi:I am so fortunate that I've had jobs that have kept me close to the Olympic and Commonwealth Games movement. I, you know, I've attended eight Commonwealth Games now and four Olympic Games really, really like in a variety of capacities. But the ones that you actually compete in, they're very, very special. and although you know you know i was thinking about some of the issues that are going on around the world at the moment you know both those games that i competed in were boycott games um for for a variety of reasons and in in edinburgh we were in a situation where um the caribbean and the africans had boycott the games because of um margaret thatcher's policies on um economic sanctions in south africa so you know it got me to grow up quickly and understand that Sport is really important, but it does have implications beyond sport.

6:57Katie Sadleir:Then you decided to stop swimming and move from the water into the boardroom to be an administrator at Swim New Zealand in your early 20s. Why did that appeal to you at such a young age?

7:11Mani Djazmi:I went to the Olympics in 1984. And I think that at that Games there in particular, I decided that I'd quite like to have a volunteer career in sport. And I kind of visualized myself as maybe being a chef de mission at some stage. I like that kind of leadership role and how you create the environment for other athletes. And so I decided that I would study in sport and did an undergraduate in sports management in Christchurch in New Zealand. And I went on to do a master's in sports management. And I guess whilst I was doing that, I was in a sport that was really developing still. In swimming in New Zealand at that stage, you had a New Zealand aquatics board.

7:52Mani Djazmi:So each of the disciplines were represented on the swimming board. and there was an opportunity for a president to get involved. So I became the president of New Zealand Synchronised Swimming and it went directly to be an administrator on that board. You know, I was studying the sport, so it was quite a natural thing for me. I was young and so I had a lot to learn about some of the ways of governing, a national governing body, but I had some really good mentors.

8:23Katie Sadleir:It was even seven men on the board. Was it daunting to be outnumbered in that way?

8:28Mani Djazmi:Well, that became a bit of the story of my life for quite some time in terms of my career. I mean, I spent a considerable amount of time in my sporting career managing and leading high performance. And that was very, very male dominated. I mean, I think I approached it. I was probably a bit cheeky. I was young. I remember going to these board meetings on a weekend. And I used to think, why on earth are these people in an inside room all dressed up in their blazers with their fancy pockets, etc., etc.? Very much officialdom. And I was this young thing thinking I'm just going to rock up there with my tracksuit.

9:04Mani Djazmi:But, you know, I learned a lot from that first sport and from the people that I worked alongside. And we did some really good things.

9:11Katie Sadleir:When you became the chief executive of Commonwealth Sport in 2021, what was your message at a time when the relevance of the Commonwealth Games was doubted by many people?

9:26Mani Djazmi:Well, I believe in the Commonwealth movement. I believed in it then and I believe in it now. And it has played such an incredibly important part of my life personally. you know I mentioned I'd been to eight Commonwealth Games in a variety of capacities of supporting other athletes to get there and in that capacity I knew about the potential and the real critical role that the Commonwealth plays in athletes pathways so from my perspective I'm the kind of person if someone says to me you know this is this is irrelevant I was going to jump up and demonstrate how much it is not. Because? Because the Commonwealth Games provides an opportunity for young talent to be exposed to multi-games events at a really early age before they become household names.

10:20Mani Djazmi:And there's plenty of examples of that. But it's more than that. You know, when I think of my time at the Olympics and the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth network of 74 territories and countries support each other as a family in terms of issues that they may be facing. It brings people together from small and large countries with an equal voice to discuss things that are important.

10:49Katie Sadleir:You're listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service.

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12:03Katie Sadleir:i'm manny jasmine and i'm in conversation with the ceo of the commonwealth games katie sadlia when katie walked into the studio the first thing she said to me was we've got you next week to be honest i'd been wondering how to bring up the topic myself so i knew what she was talking about which was her team New Zealand playing my team Iran in our first World Cup match. So we lapsed into a conversation about football. She told me how she knew the father of one of the New Zealand players. I told her about just some of the challenges faced by the Iran team. But eventually as you've been hearing we did get round to talking about the Commonwealth Games.

12:44Katie Sadleir:So let's returned to that conversation with Katie Sadlia. This year's games are in Glasgow, 12 years after they were last there, but they weren't meant to be there because that was the Australian state of Victoria who was supposed to be the hosts. But then they pulled out suddenly in 2023. What do you remember of that moment? Why did they pull out and how did you find out about it?

13:12Mani Djazmi:Fair to say it's a day that I will never forget in my professional career. Not in a good way, I guess. Well, it was a challenge. It certainly was a challenge for me as a professional, particularly given I was on the board of the Victorian Games at the time and no one on the board saw this coming. Why they say they came out of the Games was because it had grown too expensive. There's probably other reasons. There is plenty of other reasons. There were some decisions that were made by the state of Victoria in how they wanted to deliver the games, which did cost costs to escalate, but not to the extent that was proposed in the reason for the blowout.

13:56Mani Djazmi:I was given seven hours notice, and I remember very much sitting in a room with Dame Louise Martin, who was the president at the time, in our offices in Storygate in London. and we had two visitors from the Victorian government who had come to visit. We did not actually understand what they were coming for, who sat down in front of me and basically said that in seven hours time, Dan Andrews was going to tell the state of Australia that they were pulling out of the games. What I did at that point in time was say to them that there was no provision in the contract for them to do this. They did say to me, you might be in a bit of a shock, but this is the news we have for you.

14:34Mani Djazmi:I said, there's no provision in the contract for you to do this. I suggest that you shut your computers down and go away and come back in two to three hours when I have our lawyers with us, when we can talk about this in a more serious way. So it was a day of significant leadership responsibilities for myself and for the president in terms of making sure that our membership knew what was going on as quickly as possible. So they didn't wake up, particularly the Australians, they didn't wake up at seven o 'clock in the morning and hear Dan Andrews state that he was pulling out of the games.

15:08Katie Sadleir:Yeah, that's the premier of Victoria. You said, I have to make a lot of very difficult decisions. This isn't one of them. Did you think that was it for the games?

15:18Mani Djazmi:No, absolutely not. You know, I mean, because I believed in the strength of the Commonwealth movement, I understand the importance of the Commonwealth in terms of athlete pathways. it was a rather large speed wobble that we needed to get through but we had just come through an incredibly successful Birmingham Commonwealth Games so that was very expensive um yeah British

15:42Katie Sadleir:government paid for most of it and local government in Birmingham uh came up with the rest I mean is it realistic to think that you know other cities in the world can afford that much money to spend on a week and a half of sport?