Sunday, December 16, 2007 More Olympic sports dropped in next Seag
NAKHON RATCHASIMA—The Southeast Asian Games’ drift away from Olympic sports will continue at the next event in 2009, with organizers set to jettison many such disciplines as part of a severe cutback in the breadth of competition.
Among the Olympic sports present at the current Games that will be absent from competition in the Laos capital Vientiane in December 2009 are cycling, basketball, gymnastics, hockey, rowing and weightlifting.
Yet the event will retain the likes of tenpin bowling, petanque, billiards, ‘dragon’ boat racing, sepak takraw, the more obscure martial arts of wushu, Muay Thai and pencak silat, and will resume the sport of juggling a shuttlecock with feet.
There will be 25 disciplines compared to the 43 in Nakhon Ratchasima.
The cutback is partly due to being in a landlocked country—there will be no sailing, windsurfing or triathlon—and partly due to lack of facilities in Vientiane.
There had also been a determination to reduce the breadth of the SEA Games, with many events in the current Games having small fields and weak competition.
The 24th SEA Games ended on Saturday, with Thailand predictably topping the table with 183 gold medals.
It was the fourth straight Games where the host nation had finished atop the standings, raising further questions about the judging.
The lingering suspicion about home advantage erupted here in boxing, where the Philippines forfeited six men’s gold medal bouts in a protest at judging in the women’s finals where its boxers lost out to Thai opponents in all five bouts that were decided on points.
The Philippines’ protest spared its fighters having to compete with a world-class array of Thai boxers, and would have had more weight if the Philippines had voiced similar concerns when it was seen to benefit from the judging at the Manila event in 2005.
The protest robbed the Games of a rare display of world-competitive athletes in gold medal competition. The likes of Manus Boonjamnong and his brother Non, Amnat Ruenroeng, Somjit Jongjohor, Pichai Sayota and Suriya Prasathinphimai will all be genuine gold threats at the Olympics in Beijing in 2008. (AP)
