page_title: Concerns and controversies over the 2010 Commonwealth Games
section_title: Athletics
hierarchical_section_title: Concerns and controversies over the 2010 Commonwealth Games / Sporting controversies / Athletics
caption_attribution_description: Sally Pearson during 2010 Memorial Van Damme
context_page_description: A number of concerns and controversies surfaced before the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India, which received widespread media coverage both in India and internationally.
  The Commonwealth Games was severely criticised by several prominent Indian politicians and social activists because millions of dollars have been spent on the sporting event despite the fact that India has one of the world's largest concentration of poor people. Additionally, several other problems related to the 2010 Commonwealth Games have been highlighted by Indian investigative agencies and media outlets; these include – serious corruption by officials of the Games' Organising Committee, delays in the construction of main Games' venues, infrastructural compromise, possibility of a terrorist attack, and exceptionally poor ticket sales before the event.
context_section_description: During the Final of the Women's 100m sprint final, a controversy was caused by the eventual disqualification of Sally Pearson of Australia.  She had won the race on the third attempted start after one start was delayed because of excessive crowd noise and the second due to a false start by Laura Turner of England. Pearson was disqualified because she was deemed to have false-started in the second attempted restart along with Turner. This was as a direct result of a protest lodged by Team England. The controversy was caused as only Turner was disqualified from the race during the race because of a false start and not Pearson. Turner ran the race under protest. Pearson and other athletes were not informed of the protest until four hours after the race, as they were waiting to begin the medal presentation for the race. Commonwealth Games Federation president Mike Fennell called Pearson's treatment "unsatisfactory" and that the whole situation was caused by an "unacceptable communications blunder".
caption: Pearson won the 100m sprint before being disqualified.
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