KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 20 — Forty sports will be competed at the 2021 SEA Games scheduled from November 21 to December 2 next year.
The decision was reached at a meeting between the SEA Games Federation (SEAGF) Council and the Vietnam SEA Games Organising Committee held virtually today.
Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) president Tan Sri Mohamad Norza Zakaria said the meeting agreed to add tenpin bowling from the 11 types of sports requested by OCM earlier.
“Among the hot debate during the meeting was the rejection of indoor hockey proposed by seven National Olympic Councils by the organising committee, as well as the absence of water polo which is a core sports to be competed at SEA Games,” he told a media conference after the meeting.
Mohamad Norza however said water polo and indoor hockey would still stand a chance to be featured in 2021 SEA Games when the organisers and the government of Vietnam hold further discussions.
Asked for the reasons of the organisers for turning down the 10 sports requested by OCM, Mohamad Norza said it was decided after taking into consideration several factors including allocation constraint, absence of national sport association in the host country apart from not having the sport facilities.
In July, OCM sent an appeal to SEAGF to list an additional 11 sports namely indoor hockey, netball, sailing, tenpin bowling, squash, lawn bowling, cricket, seven-aside rugby, skateboard, floorball and sambo (an unarmed self-defence sport from Russia).
The SEAGF executive committee which met in the middle of October was reported to have agreed to include four more sports from the initial list of 36 sports decided by the organisers in July which are triathlon; tenpin bowling; jiu-jitsu and electronic sports.
In the 2019 SEA Games in the Philippines, 56 types of sports were contested with Malaysia taking the fifth spot out of 11 countries after collecting 56 gold, 58 silver and 71 bronze medal. — Bernama
