It is set to become the third English city to host the Commonwealth Games and the first in 20 years, since Manchester 2002.

Staged for the most part in glorious summer weather, Manchester 2002 was seen as helping to restore the reputation of British sport and served as a catalyst for London’s successful Olympic bid.

Manchester had originally set its sights on the Olympic Games when in 1985, Sir Bob Scott, Manchester Palace theatre director, proposed a bid for 1992 in the wake of the financially successful Los Angeles 1984 Olympics.

There was soon domestic competition from London and a Birmingham bid led by former Sports Minister Denis Howell.

It was Birmingham which advanced to the international stage, but despite a well-constructed bid submission, Howell's team lost out when Barcelona was chosen to host in 1992.

A similar fate befell Manchester, which led the British challenge for 1996 and 2000.

"I am convinced that Manchester must continue to think big," Scott said, after the city had lost for a second time.

"Bidding for the Commonwealth Games would be an excellent step forward."

In November 1993, Birmingham announced that it would not bid after the city's Labour group leader Theresa Stewart had led opposition for reasons of cost.

An editorial in the Birmingham Daily Post had also sounded a note of caution.

"The last Games to be held in Britain descended into farce and unsurprisingly lost a fortune," as it recalled the 1986 Games in Edinburgh when tycoon Robert Maxwell had been brought in to "save" the Games.

There had also been a widespread boycott in Edinburgh, as a result of the British Government’s policy on sporting contact with South Africa in the apartheid era.

In 1991, Sheffield staged the Summer Universiade which lost money and had, said the paper, become a "watchword for financial disaster".

Sheffield duly withdrew from bidding for 2002 after failing to secure financial guarantees, so in the domestic run-off, Manchester beat London by 17 votes to 7.

"I am determined Manchester should be the frontrunner for 2002, we are the first ones to throw our hat into the ring and we are the ones they all had to beat," Scott declared.

Rival bids had been anticipated from Adelaide and Johannesburg, but by the time the 1994 Games took place in Canada, the South African bid already seemed in jeopardy.

"The question has arisen whether we would be ready for 2002," admitted South Africa Commonwealth Games Association President Mluleki George.

In fact, it was soon withdrawn, but the wider reputation of English sport remained a concern.

Widespread football hooliganism in the 1970s and 1980s came to a head with the riot by Liverpool fans at the 1985 European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels where 39 Italian fans died.

A five-year ban from European club football followed, and although this had now been lifted, a serious incident in Dublin caused the abandonment of the Ireland versus England international in February 1995, with 40 arrests made. 

This came only months before the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) made its final decision on the host for 2002.

Manchester was the only candidate when the CGF gathered in Bermuda to make the formal decision. 

"Manchester had a very strong bid," confirmed CGF chairman Michael Fennell.

"The right choice has been made," insisted British Sports Minister Iain Sproat.

The Games were to be centred on a new complex in the eastern part of Manchester known as "Sport City" where a new velodrome had already been opened by the Princess Royal.

Nearby, the City of Manchester Stadium was built at a cost of £110 million ($135 million/€128 million).

The area was "the major regeneration priority and the cornerstone of a lasting legacy", Manchester City Council said in the project's prospectus.

It was built with a temporary stand at one end for the Games, held 38,000 and was used for Opening and Closing Ceremonies, athletics and rugby sevens.

In the year after the Games, it was planned that the athletics track was to be removed and capacity increased to 48,000 as Premier League side Manchester City moved in.

A new aquatics centre costing £32 million ($39 million/€37 million) also took shape in the city. 

In all, 15 venues in Manchester and the north-west were used and the Sport England development agency made a contribution of £165 million ($203 million/€191 million) as the major funder of the Games.

"Our investment will offer a lasting legacy of top-quality sports facilities for future enjoyment and provide a catalyst for regeneration," Sport England chairman Sir Trevor Brooking said.

In a curious parallel with Birmingham 2022, shooting had originally been left off the programme, but some 40 nations led by New Zealand had lobbied for its reinstatement.

The sport was not held in Manchester but some 273 kilometres away at the National Shooting Centre in Bisley, near Woking, on the outskirts of London. Amid traditional wooden shooting lodges, modern state-of-the-art facilities were installed for the sport in pistol, rifle and shot gun events.

"The Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games are an event of great importance in their own right and one that is crucial to wider ambitions for staging events in this country," a British parliamentary select committee declared.

Yet less than a year before the Games opened, Britain had suffered another blow to sporting prestige when the Government pulled the plug on the 2005 World Athletics Championships planned for Picketts Lock in the East End of London.

Sports Minister Richard Caborn and Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell came in for widespread criticism for the decision and Sebastian Coe even referred to "Jowell and her ‘Dad’s Army’ delegation," in The Telegraph newspaper.

This was seen as a body blow to any future major event aspirations just the finishing touches were being made to the Commonwealth Games preparations.

The Queen visited the Athletes' Village which had been established in the university accommodation at Fallowfield. This was also a site with great sporting heritage.

In 1893, Wolverhampton Wanderers played Everton there in the FA Cup final, and in 1934, the cycling track on the site had been used for the Empire Games cycling, although the competition in other sports was held in London.

The velodrome was long gone by 2002, so the Kenyans ventured rather further afield as they sought practice.

In fact, George Ochieng and Arthur Kamu were stopped by motorway police travelling on the hard shoulder, just yards past the Kearsley Spur junction of the M61.

Excitement was growing through the Queen’s Baton Relay which was seen as an important vehicle in promoting the Games and an expansive international route took it to 24 nations in 87 days before the final 50 days in Britain.

The Opening Ceremony began with Sir Steve Redgrave beating a giant drum, the gift of 1998 hosts Kuala Lumpur.

A new Commonwealth Games flag was raised with a symbol which organisers said "visually raises the bar for sport by promoting international peace, tolerance, understanding and equality through sports and sports traditions."

Aerialist Lindsey Butcher, suspended from a balloon, descended with the Baton which was carried by champions from across the Commonwealth, before David Beckham, joined by 10-year-old Kirsty Howard, presented it to the Queen.

Athletics was at the very start of the programme, because as in 2022, European Championships in Munich were to follow.

In the 100 metres, Kim Collins won a first gold medal for St Kitts and Nevis.

When England's Jonathan Edwards won triple jump gold with a Games record 17.86 metres it meant that he briefly held Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European titles at the same time.

Kelly Holmes won women’s 1500 metres gold for the second time, eight years after her first success.

The Games were also significant for the first fully-integrated Para sports programme.

The elite sports with a disability (EAD) attracted 20 competitors to take part in five different sports.

In the pool, South Africa’s Para swimmer Natalie du Toit won both EAD freestyle events and was later awarded the first David Dixon Award, named in honour of the long-serving CGF secretary, and awarded for "excellence in performance, fair play and overall contribution to her team's performance".

Australia’s Ian Thorpe won six gold medals and set a 400m freestyle world record as the undoubted star of the pool.

On the final day, it was said that 100,000 packed the streets of Manchester to watch the triathlon.

Despite heavy rain at the Closing Ceremony, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge pronounced the Games were a successful "litmus test" passed.

"I think it's definitely going to have an influence on the potential bid for London for 2012," Rogge the BBC.

British Olympic Association (BOA) chairman and IOC member Craig Reedie was exultant.

"In any future Olympic bidding plans that the BOA might have, it was absolutely crucial that Manchester made a resounding success of these games," Reedie told The Guardian newspaper.

"It's our opinion that they have done just that, we're delighted that these games have been so well run and so well received."

The proof of just how well came three years later in Singapore when Rogge opened that fateful envelope to announce that London had been awarded the 2012 Olympics.