England is listed as Gambia in the official Gold Coast Commonwealth Games program in an embarrassing blunder ahead of Wednesday night’s opening ceremony, British media has reported.
Its capital is not London but Banjul, according to the glossy 130-page program which contains an official welcome from the Queen.
The nation that gave us the entire Commonwealth, not to mention the Games, is also listed as having over two million citizens — a far cry from its actual population of more than 66.5 million people.
And the program says England’s first Commonwealth Games were in 1970, when in fact it was 1930.
The glaring errors have been revealed in the $10 program which includes welcome messages from dignitaries including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate and Commonwealth Games Federation president Louise Martin.
The program includes profiles on the 71 Commonwealth Games nations.
Publishers the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games Corporation (GOLDOC) appear to have mixed up England’s profile with that of Gambia, a tiny African nation which only rejoined the Commonwealth a few weeks before the Coast Games.
Its capital is Banjul and it has a population of 2,051,363 people.
“It’s a pretty embarrassing clanger,” a Games volunteer who discovered the gaffe told News Corp.
“This is the official program that thousands of people will buy as a keepsake and the details on the country that created the Commonwealth are wrong.
“If GOLDOC knew about the mistake, it must have been too late or too expensive to reprint the magazine.”
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