Gold Coast 2018 Wants Usain Bolt

(ATR) The organizing committee of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games are doing "everything they can" to bring Usain Bolt to the event next year, says chairman Peter Beattie.

Beattie was speaking to reporters at a press briefing for next year’s event, at London’s Australia High Commission.

Despite sprint king Bolt pledging to retire after the athletics world championships in London this year, Beattie confirmed that discussions were ongoing with the Jamaican and admitted that the move was "shameless promotion" for the event.

"Look if he came, obviously we haven’t got a final decision at the moment, but he’s a legend," Beattie said. "He is the best known athlete in the world, he’s actually a really class act, he’s a lovely human being. We’d love him as an ambassador.

"Even if he just came to say hello we’d roll out the red carpet, we don’t particularly care, we love the guy, we think he’s terrific and we’ll do everything we can to get him there.

"That’s shameless promotion and it’s shameless opportunism but this guy is a legend, if you think of all the stars you’ve known in your life, you’ve got great stars but he’s got a humility about him, he’s a nice human being and he’s an inspiration to a whole generation of young athletes and that’s why he’s value."

Bolt competed in the 4x100m relay event at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and was cited as a major reason for packing out the Hampden Park stadium and increasing coverage of the event.

Even though he will not be part of the 6,600 athletes competing at the Games, organizers will hope that any ‘Bolt effect’ will increase awareness and therefore ticket sales.

Beattie’s comments come at a difficult time for the entire movement. Alongside him at the briefing this week was Commonwealth Games Federation CEO David Grevemberg, who had to field multiple questions about the decision this week to strip Durban of hosting rights to the 2022 event.

However, as reported by Around the Rings, Grevemberg insisted that the Games were still relevant and that there had been an enormous amount of interest in replacing the South African city as host in 2022.

One star guest who will definitely be at Gold Coast 2018, made it to the press briefing as well. Guests were treated to a free Games mascot plush toy.

Borobi, the surfing koala, was born out of a public art competition late last year.

Written and reported by Christian Radnedgein London.

Follow him on Twitter @ChristianRad

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