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June 5 2015 | sport-magazine.co.uk 29

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This month, Azerbaijan will host the first ever European Games. Sport paid a visit to find out why

F ire shoots out of the ground on a hillside in the outskirts of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The flames are fuelled by natural gas seeping

out from underneath, and they have been burning for a thousand years. That’s what some say, anyway. Others say that a farmer accidentally lit the gas stream alight with a discarded cigarette some time in the 1950s.

Azerbaijan, a country of 9.5 million people on the western edge of the Caspian Sea, is full of these kinds of contradictions. It will be brought into global focus this month, as Baku hosts the first ever European Games – a multi-sport event similar to the Olympics, featuring 20 sports and more than 6,000 athletes (see box on following page).

It’s not the first time the country’s name has appeared in the sporting press, and it won’t be the last. You might have seen the ‘Land of Fire’ slogan gracing the football shirts of Atletico Madrid and Sheffield Wednesday. Baku will also stage a Formula 1 race in 2016, on a new street circuit. And it’s one of the 13 host cities for Euro 2020, when it will stage three group games and a quarter final.

Azerbaijan is also one of the most oppressed countries in Europe. Its president, Ilham Aliyev, took over in 2003 from his father Heydar Aliyev, whose portrait looms large outside many public buildings throughout Baku. Elections have been marred by voter fraud, intimidation and violence – the incumbent won re-election in 2013 with nearly 85 per cent of the vote, and in 2009 he amended the constitution to remove presidential term limits.

There has been an unprecedented crackdown on human rights since early 2014. According to Human Rights Watch, “the government has detained and brought unfounded criminal charges against dozens of civil society activists and journalists, prompting others to flee the country or go into hiding”.

It all sounds sadly familiar. From Sochi 2014 to Qatar 2022, it seems like every major sporting event on the calendar is being hosted somewhere that stirs controversy. But why are countries such as Azerbaijan and Qatar bidding for these events? And why are they getting them?

Soft power“For these countries, money really isn’t their primary goal,” says Owen Evans, deputy editor of SportBusiness International. “Normally they’re sitting on natural reserves and they have bottomless pockets, so they can do whatever they want with their cash. But from a political perspective it’s all about soft power.

“People in these countries feel that sport is quite a worthwhile way to spend their money, because it can provide quite a nice glossy sheen to something that can potentially be quite murky in the background.”

For Azerbaijan, which gained independence from the Soviet Union only in 1991, it’s also a chance to align itself with Europe. Its government is quite open about its goals.

“All these events are a chance for our city – a chance for Azerbaijan, a young state – to position our country on the map,” says Azad Rahimov, Azerbaijan’s minister for youth and sport. “Our ambition is to show our readiness, to show that we can.”

Those on the organising committee say that, while they’re focused on the event itself, the country will benefit too. k

30 sport-magazine.co.uk | June 5 2015

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JUNE 12-28 BT Sport

It has been talked about for decades. Now Europe has finally become the final continent to set up its own continental multi-sport event. The first European Games will see 6,000 athletes going to Baku to compete in 20 sports across 17 days of competition, from June 12 to June 28. There are

16 Olympic sports, plus 3x3 basketball, beach football, karate and sambo, which is a kind of Russian martial art. Vladimir Putin is a fan.

Eighteen venues will be used for the Games, including the purpose-built 68,000-seat Baku National Stadium, the futuristic Heydar Aliyev Sports and Exhibition Complex, and the Tofiq Bahramov Stadium – named after the linesman who

awarded England’s contentious goal in the 1966 World Cup final.

As well as the 253 medals on offer, 12 of the sports offer opportunities to qualify for the Olympics in Rio – either directly, or by gaining ranking points – so the competition should be of a high standard. British athletes likely to make the trip include taekwondo star Jade Jones, boxer Nicola Adams (left) and triathlete Helen Jenkins.

The new Baku National Stadium has a capacity of 68,000. After the European Games, it will be used by Azerbaijan’s football team

“When people see this city, they’re always surprised because it’s a very beautiful place,” says Charlie Wijeratna, who was commercial director of Baku 2015 before leaving his post to become chief commercial officer at Aston Villa. “There’s an automatic corollary of promoting the Games – the country kind of gets dragged along with it. But the focus is promoting the event.”

But, as Qatar has found out, it’s not simply a matter of throwing money at an event and reaping the rewards. These things can backfire, as Evans explains: “It’s a double-edged sword. The global spotlight you get is great, because suddenly everyone is mentioning your name. But that spotlight also uncovers the other aspects of society.”

Black goldThe crescent of Baku’s shoreline has been a hive of industrial activity ever since oil was first struck in the region in the 19th century, transforming it from a sleepy stop off-point on the Silk Road trading route into a black gold boom town. The city is ringed by nodding oil derricks, and when the wind is right you can smell the black stuff in the air.

Recently, that extraction activity has been joined by frantic oil-funded construction, as expensive arenas are built and skyscrapers shoot up – sometimes literally glittering, like the Flame Towers. The trio of twisted buildings is designed to resemble a flickering fire: at night they are illuminated, alternating between animated flames – to hammer home the metaphor – and a scrolling Azeri flag.

Azerbaijan has invested £6.5bn in the European Games, and Rahimov insists that they will bring improvements for its people.

“A total of 66 per cent of the people are under 35 years old, and we really want to bring them from the streets, from drugs and from drink towards other goals and a healthy future,” he explains. “Using sport is the best instrument for achieving that. That is why we are hosting huge events for table tennis and badminton – to create an obsession.”

Many of the people we speak to also argue that the Games are helping train local people, teaching them how to deliver projects of this scale. The majority of the 1,400-strong organising committee are from Azerbaijan, although because there have been only a few years to get things ready, outside expertise has also been called on – more than 200 members of staff were involved with London 2012.

Yet the contrast between the centre of Baku – where upmarket shops line wide streets where F1 cars will race next year –

and the poorer outskirts of the city remains stark. Across the road from the impressive Baku National Stadium (above), you can see the ramshackle dwellings of families earning as little as 300 manat a month (about £187).

You could argue, however, that putting a country in the international spotlight can force it to open up and modernise.

“It’s a young country, only 23 years old,” Simon Clegg, chief operating officer for Baku 2015, told The Guardian last year. “What has taken place in 23 years is remarkable, really,

in comparison to other countries. Look where they’ve come from – decades of Soviet rule and oppression. You don’t go from there to there overnight. If you do, you end up with chaos and civil disorder.”

But there’s a danger that, instead of opening up, things are instead swept under the carpet before visitors arrive. There has been an extensive clean-up operation in the months leading up to the Games, which recently led to tragedy when cheap plastic cladding applied to the outside of older

What are the European Games?

“The global spotlight you get is great, because suddenly everyone is mentioning your name. But that spotlight also uncovers the other aspects of society”– Owen Evans, SportBusiness International

31

buildings in the city centre ignited. It led to the deaths of 16 people.

Local people feel frustrated at this and other changes, including the closure of roads, the suspension of bus routes, and the banning of weddings and funerals during the Games in an attempt to reduce traffic.

Costly rebrandingStill, with its young population crying out for acceptance in Europe, Azerbaijan remains a much more palatable host than say, Qatar, which has less than 300,000 actual citizens.

Part of the problem – and one of the reasons so many controversial hosts are able to get involved – is because staging these events has become so expensive. Only

countries with deep pockets can afford to play host. Sochi’s Winter Olympics in 2014, for example, cost an estimated $51bn. A number of cities have dropped out of the running for future Olympics on grounds of cost and a lack of public support for spending on sport.

“The danger has been there for some time, and the major rights-holders have let it get that way because they’ve essentially been holding auctions for the highest bidder,” says Owen Evans. “That naturally brings in the non-democratic states with the bottomless bank accounts. Look at the 2022 race for the Winter Olympics (only Almaty in Kazakhstan and Beijing completed bids) and compare it to the cities that bid for the 2012 Games [Madrid, London, New York, Paris, Moscow].”

Azerbaijan was the only country to bid for the inaugural European Games.

“They’re ambitious, they want a big platform, and they love that it’s a European Games,” says Evans. “They want to brand themselves as European because they’re in that kind of difficult place on the edge of the continent. But it’s not just a one-shot project. They’ve got the Grand Prix [which will be known as the ‘European Grand Prix’], securing Euro 2020 was brilliant for them; I didn’t see that coming at all. They’ve done a sustained attack on sport, in all sports, so you can’t really fault their commitment.”

Things are changing – the International Olympic Committee has recently drawn up new guidelines to make bidding and hosting more affordable, and some of the traditional hosts are looking at bidding for the Olympic Games in 2024. But it will take a while for those changes to take hold, and you can expect Baku’s new arenas to be the scene of many sporting memories over the coming decades.

Looking out across the Caspian Sea from the foot of the Flame Towers, you can see the new arenas: the $350m Crystal Hall constructed for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest; the new Aquatics Centre, which holds the country’s first 50m swimming pool. There’s also the blue, red and green of a gargantuan Azeri flag swinging in the breeze atop a pole that’s taller than London’s Walkie Talkie building. In fact, when first flown in 2010, it was the biggest flag in the world – a record now held, almost inevitably, by Qatar.

It’s a fitting metaphor for the European Games – like giant flags, sport has become a way for countries to brand themselves in the eyes of the world. And the competition is as fierce as anything on the track.

Amit Katwala @amitkatwala

The organisers of the Games argue that they will help bring

prosperity to local people

Baku’s population exploded when oil was discovered. You can see the extraction happening on the outskirts of the city