7000 to participate in national masters competitions games a third short of target

Andrew Mathieson
Next week’s Australian Masters Games in Geelong will fall almost a third short of its attendance target, organisers have revealed.
They said less than 7000 competitors would participate in the games.
Confederation of Australian Sport, which owns the biennial national event, announced last year that the games would attract more than 10,000 veteran athletes, officials and supporters to Geelong.
Games general manager Daniel Fingerhut said Geelong only broke the 7000 mark after including “participants and accompanying people”.
The attendance will be the lowest for the past seven games since Perth attracted 5759 in 1993.
The last regional Australian city to host the event, Newcastle, set an attendance record of 11,225 in 2001.
Games organisers said 8000 people had to register for the Geelong games to reach its targets, with every four bringing an additional visitor to Geelong.
Mr Fingerhut did not believe the world’s worst financial crisis since the first masters games in 1987 was behind the attendance shortfall for Geelong’s biggest sports event.
“The figures were below what we hoped but we always tried to push high and tried to promote the games the best we could,” he said.
“Still, 7000 is, at this time of year, an amazing number and is still going to be the largest multi-sport festival by any comparison in the country.”
Mr Fingerhut believed that most competitors were warming up this month for a World Masters Games in Sydney later this year. Sydney won hosting rights to the international event the same year Geelong secured the Australian games.
Mr Fingerhut said Geelong had still proven popular with country competitors this year.
“We have a lot of people from Victoria who are interested and who have not participated before,” he said.
“In terms of people looking after their health and trying to get active in sport, this has been a great outcome and I think we have really seen a lot of large numbers in that.”
Nine of the near 70 sports will start competition next Friday.
The opening ceremony will be the next day at Skilled Stadium.
More information about the games is available at www.australianmastersgames.com.