England gymnast Gabriel Langton was taken to hospital after a heavy fall during the men's team gymnastics final at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last week, suffering concussion after landing headfirst off the horizontal bar. Days later, Singapore's Jovi Loh was stretchered off with a serious knee injury during the men's individual all-around final. Two incidents in the same week, in the same sport and, according to David Griffiths, senior advisor, sport and entertainment at Miller, exactly the kind of risk insurers watch most closely at a Games like this one.
Glasgow 2026 is a smaller, later-arranged event than most major Games, with the host city confirmed only around two years out and the programme scaled back to 10 sports. But the compressed timeline hasn't changed which disciplines carry the sharpest insurance risk.
For insurers, the distinction is not simply which sports produce the most injuries, but which carry the greatest potential for severe claims.
"The two sports which would probably be seen as the highest risk would be gymnastics and I suppose boxing is going to be the other one," Griffiths said. "The potential for serious injury is significant."
Most of the remaining programme presents a different profile, with cycling, netball and judo generating a steadier stream of lower-level claims rather than catastrophic injuries. In other words: frequency versus severity. Gymnastics and boxing produce far fewer injuries but carry a significantly higher chance of a genuinely serious outcome.
That distinction is also reflected in the injuries clinicians see. Physiotherapist Agia-Maria Ghabrial, from Bupa, the Official Healthcare Principal Partner of Glasgow 2026, points to the same two sports, but for different reasons.
"Among the sports in the Commonwealth Games programme, I'd point to boxing and artistic gymnastics being the highest risk," physiotherapist Agia-Maria Ghabrial said. "Boxing consistently records some of the highest injury rates in Olympic sport, with around a quarter of athletes sustaining an injury during competition."
Gymnastics presents a different challenge. "The injury burden is often less visible," Ghabrial said. "Injury risk isn't just about how often injuries happen, but how much they affect performance and participation."
While athlete injuries dominate headlines, organisers' insurance responsibilities usually lie elsewhere. Athletes are typically insured by the associations sending them to the Games, leaving organisers primarily exposed to liability claims if a serious injury can be linked to negligence.
"If there was a serious injury and there could be some negligence somewhere in the organisation – whether it's with equipment or with officials not officiating properly – their pricing concern would be around a liability claim against the organisation due to negligence leading to the injury," Griffiths said.
Liability is only one part of the underwriting picture. As ticketing, scoring and event management systems have become increasingly digital, cyber risk has climbed insurers' watchlists.
"Much more so than four or five years ago, we're seeing much more concern around potential cyber risks impacting either ticketing systems or scoring systems – everything is digital," Griffiths said.
Geopolitical instability has also become a bigger consideration, alongside the cost of heightened security and the growing potential for reputational damage.
"Concerns over potential cancellations or interruptions due to the geopolitical situation are a major concern for any event at the moment because of so much uncertainty," he said.
Collectively, those pressures have shifted the underwriting focus well beyond sporting injuries and towards the resilience of the event itself.
The insurance implications do not end when the medals are handed out. Ghabrial said major sporting events often inspire people to take up a new activity or return to sport, creating a different pattern of injuries beyond elite competition.
"Major sporting events often inspire people to get active and take up a new sport themselves, or return to a sport they haven't played in years," she said. "The health benefits are clear, but the risk of injury can rise when people increase their activity levels too quickly or train without adequate preparation."
Ghabrial said the most common mistake is ignoring early warning signs, with minor aches and pains often developing into more significant injuries if left untreated. Early intervention, she said, highlights the value of fast access to specialist healthcare before minor problems become more serious.
For organisers, meanwhile, Griffiths' advice is equally straightforward: don't wait until a risk becomes a known event before buying cancellation cover.
"What we always recommend for organisers buying cancellation insurance is buy it well in advance," he said. "If something happens – whether it affects the event directly or a war breaks out somewhere – if you had cover beforehand, you're covered. If you didn't, it's now excluded because it's a known event."
Weather tends to be the default concern, but planning ahead doesn't increase the cost of cover.
"You pay the same price whether you buy a year in advance or two weeks before, you're just getting a lot more cover."
As major sporting events become more exposed to cyber threats, geopolitical uncertainty and operational disruption, and as their ripple effects extend beyond elite competition, the biggest insurance risks are increasingly those that never happen on the field of play.
