Description
From 25 July to 4 August 2002 the city of Manchester played host to the Commonwealth Games. In the biggest competition in the seventy-two-year history of the games some of the world’s greatest athletes competed in fourteen individual sports and three team sports over ten spectacular days of sporting and cultural activity. To mark the celebration of sporting excellence, The Royal Mint issued a commemorative two-pound coin. Matthew Bonaccorsi’s reverse design, the winning entry in a competition, represents celebration, victory and sportsmanship. It depicts a moving figure holding aloft a banner, the top of which is divided into lines symbolising the lanes of a swimming pool. The design is completed with the edge inscription SPIRIT OF FRIENDSHIP. MANCHESTER 2002. Four versions of the coin have been produced, one for each of the participating teams from the United Kingdom and distinguished by a cameo version of their respective flags.