Birmingham will become outrageous.
Australia is looking to break records with a gold medal frenzy at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and sadly it means many of our athletes’ great performances will be buried in the avalanche.
While they’ll be worth watching, there are some events Australian sports fans just can’t miss, even with the unfriendly time zone difference forcing Down Under to depressingly set their alarms to see the best action.
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It says all you can take to the bank that Australia will win the 66 gold medals needed to become the first country to achieve a total of 1000 gold medals in the history of the Commonwealth Games movement.
Some astute judges are even predicting that Australia will challenge the haul of 80 gold medals won at the 2018 Games on the Gold Coast.
Once again, most of the top performances are expected to come in the pool, after a freak performance of 28 gold medals and 73 medals in total on the Gold Coast.
The list of must-see athletes for the Birmingham Games has to start with Australian star Ariarne Titmus, who captivated the entire country with her performances at the Tokyo Olympics last year.
Ariarnus Titmus
Titmus has some competition in teenage freak Summer McIntosh in the 400m freestyle. The 15-year-old Canadian is seen as a future superstar. For now, at least, Titmus’ real battle will be against the clock.
The world was denied the dream match between Titmus and American legend Katie Ledecky when Titmus decided to skip the recent World Championships to focus on her Commonwealth Games campaign.
After Titmus dethroned Ledecky at the Tokyo Games, the American won at the World Championships last month, but with a time well below the world record of 3:56.40 that Titmus broke at the Australian Championships in May.
Emma McKeon
Still hailed as Australia’s greatest Olympian after her heroics at the Tokyo Games, McKeon is expected to cement her place in history as the most successful Commonwealth Games athlete of all time .
McKeon, who has won eight gold medals and 12 in total, is on pace to break the record of swimming greats Susie O’Neill, Ian Thorpe and Leisel Jones, who share the record with 10 gold medals in the his career
Shooter Phillip Adams holds the Australian record for overall medals with 18.
McKeon is competing in eight events in Birmingham.
Peter Bol
Peter Bol is hungry to prove that the hype around him is not excessive after a disappointing campaign at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon last week.
After finishing fourth in the men’s 800m at the Tokyo Games, Bol was seventh at the World Championships with a time that was more than 1.5 seconds off his personal best.
With several of the world’s top 800m runners, including Kenya’s top runners, missing out on the Games, Bol is seen as a very real gold medal chance.
Kookaburras
The Kookaburras are ranked number one in the world and have won every Commonwealth Games men’s hockey gold medal since hockey was introduced to the competition in 1998.
With the added motivation of their heartbreaking penalty shootout loss to Belgium in the gold medal match at the Tokyo Olympics, the Kookaburra are expected to join the gold rush in Birmingham.
Cody Simpson
The pop star turned swimmer enters Birmingham with her private life making more headlines than her performances in the pool, but that could all change at the Commonwealth Games.
The 25-year-old, who has previously been romantically linked to celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and Gigi Hadid, embarked on a new path that no one saw coming when he returned to the pool in 2021 after a 10-year hiatus from competitive swimming.
Initially eyeing an Australian spot at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Simpson is ahead of schedule. His remarkable swim to place third in the 100m butterfly behind Matt Temple and Kyle Chalmers at the recent National Championships was enough to secure a place in the Commonwealth Games team.
Eleanor Patterson
Eleanor Patterson stunned the world by becoming the first Australian to win women’s high jump gold at the World Athletics Championships last week.
The 26-year-old recorded a personal best of 2.02m, equaling the Oceania record, becoming the 10th Australian to win a gold medal at the World Athletics Championships.
Patterson’s incredible comeback follows his decision to step away from the sport after missing out on selection for the 2018 Commonwealth Games team. It’s easy to forget that the 26-year-old also won the gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Rohan Browning
The 24-year-old has long been Australia’s great hope in the blue ribbon 100m event that decides the fastest man on the planet. He missed out on a place in the Tokyo Games final by just 0.09 seconds, but failed to make it past the World Championships heats earlier this month.
Big things are in store in Birmingham, where Browning is expected to challenge for a medal if he can achieve his goal of becoming only the second Australian to run under the magic 10 seconds.
Alana King
The red-hot leg-spinner has the cricketing world on a spin.
King has been a revelation since his international debut against England in January. Consolidating into a team that is almost impossible to break into, King’s deadly variations will be one of captain Meg Lanning’s trump cards as the Aussies compete for cricket’s maiden gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.
Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games full schedule
The opening ceremony will start at 20:00 local time on Thursday 28 July (for Australian fans, it’s 5:00 AEST on Friday 29 July). The closing ceremony will bring things to a close on August 8 in Birmingham, or the early hours of August 9 Down Under.
A full program of Commonwealth Games events can be seen below.