PHNOM PENH, May 10 — A technical problem involving the scoring system marred the first day of the 2023 SEA Games wushu competition at the Chroy Changvar Convention Centre here, today.
Based on Bernama’s observations, the scoring system at the competition venue failed to function, thus making it difficult for the jury in finalising the scores of the competing athletes and dragging every event to a late start.
Worse still, the problem saw the jurors having to take a long time to finalise the scores when they had to count manually, thus causing the athletes to wait a long time to start events.
“This situation clearly affected the concentration of athletes who were ready to start their events and had to wait for a long time and become lethargic when waiting for hours.
“They were also hungry because they hadn’t eaten, the Taolu competition should have ended earlier and Sanda to start at 3pm, but because of this, Sanda had to be moved to 7.30pm,” said a source when met by Bernama here.
According to the source, the scoring system is not the one commonly used for wushu in any international competition.
At the same time, he informed that the medals for the wushu medal ceremonies are also not enough.
Previously, Bernama had reported that wushu faced the possibility of being cancelled following technical problems at the competition venue involving the scoring system and platform or “leitai” for the Sanda discipline, which failed to be completed five days before the competition curtain opened.
The situation forced Malaysian Wushu Federation preident Datuk Chong Kim Fatt, who is also an executive committee member of the Asian Wushu Federation, to ask for help from the Vietnam Wushu Federation to lend their Sanda platform in an effort to ensure that national athletes were not denied the chance of making an appearance in Cambodia.
For the record, 2019 world champion Tan Cheong Min presented the first gold to the national wushu camp today after topping the women’s Nanquan final which took place in the morning. — Bernama
