Several athletes from the recently finished 2026 Commonwealth Games, held in Glasgow, have gone missing, as the Scottish Police confirmed on Tuesday. They were all boxers from Uganda and Pakistan, and have not returned home after the Games ended last Sunday: Uganda confirmed that four of the six members of the boxing team had not returned, and one Pakistani boxer also never made it to the plane back home on Tuesday.
It is common for some athletes of the Commonwealth Games, organised between 56 states from the former British Empire, to "disappear", choosing not to return home. Some chose to claim asylum in the countries where the games took place, which is the case of at least on of the Ugandan's boxers, who spoke to Ugandan outlet NBS Sports and said that they chose to follow their careers in a country they believed offered better training facilities and opportunities than their homeland.
The Games have been held since 2014 in either Australia or Great Britain. After the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in Australia, authorities were still searching for 50 athletes and officials a month after the competition ended, while another 190 had sought asylum, Reuters reported.
