IT is difficult to comprehend the sheer scale of the Commonwealth Games.

In terms of the number of sports, venues and competitors, only the Olympics Games are bigger.

Without any shadow of doubt the Manchester Games have been phenomenally successful. The main arenas have been sold out. Even the more obscure events have been well supported.

There have been no grumbles about transport and organisation, and plenty of accolades for the atmosphere and spirit.

The city of Manchester is to be congratulated for proving to the rest of the world that our country is capable of staging major international sporting events.

And the world needed some re-assurance after the disastrous attempts to develop Wembley and Picketts Lock as showpiece sporting venues.

It has been public money well spent. While it is right that investment is ploughed into sport at grass roots level, sport at the elite level must not be overlooked.

With her epic victory in Manchester, Paula Radcliffe encouraged more young girls to take up running in a few minutes of prime time television than an army of sports development officers and PE teachers have encouraged in a year.

There is some irony, however, in the fact that Britain appears to have stumbled across an athletics stadium of international standing, and yet has still suffered the indignity of its invitation to host the 2005 world championships being withdrawn.

When the politicians and sporting authorities were squabbling over how to build a suitable venue in London, they chose to ignore the one that was being created in the North-West.

And now what is happening to the Manchester track? It is being dug up in a few days' time and the stadium turned into a football-only venue, leaving the country without a suitable athletics stadium

There are lessons to be learned from the Commonwealth Games. After all, lessons are perhaps better learned from a successful sporting venture, rather than the spectacular failures that have gone before it.

And surely the biggest lesson of all is that London should not have the monopoly on international sporting venues and international sporting events in our country.