The African delegation, whose votes could be crucial when the host of the 2018 event is chosen on November 11 in St Kitts and Nevis, attended the Gold Coast Airport Marathon at the weekend and have been visiting local facilities as part of its assessment of the city's bid for the 2018 Games.

The President of the Nigeria Olympic Committee Sani Ndanusa said he had enjoyed their visit and were particularly impressed with the public support for the event.

"That was a very good expression, a very, very clear statement about this community being a sport loving community and being a sport friendly community," he said.

"An important thing there was that the Premier herself was at the marathon finals and that shows how the Queensland Government is really supporting sport on the Gold Coast."

The chief executive of the Australian Commonwealth Games Federation Perry Crosswhite claimed that the African delegates are vitally important as they have more votes than any other part of the Commonwealth and claimed that they are a diverse and knowledgeable group.

"Some of them are long-distance runners, some of them are sprinters," he said.

"South Africa has a lot of team sports like bowls and that sort of thing, so you have to cater for everyone, unlike some other regions where you just have to worry about a few sports."

"With Africa you have to worry about all of them and they have a lot of their own African games, they're in the Olympic Games, they go to other smaller events, they know a lot about it."

Gold Coast 2018 chairman Mark Stockwell added that he was delighted with the staging of the marathon and that it was a great event to showcase how well the Gold Coast could hold a potential 2018 Commonwealth Games.

"To run the logistics of an event like that you've got to be able to accommodate people, you've got to be able to have the volunteers, have the ability to look after the roads and the security and the transport systems and all of those sorts of things," he said.

"So we always knew that this was the one weekend that we wanted to bring the Africans to town, because they're all passionate about running and we wanted to show them how we could stage this event."

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