SEA Games lineup unveiled

The Southeast Asian (SEA) Games Federation Council has finalised the coming SEA Games' programme with 36 sports, six more than what were announced months earlier.
The Southeast Asian (SEA) Games Federation Council has finalised thecoming SEA Games' programme with 36 sports, six more than what wereannounced months earlier.

Six additional sports were included inthe games schedule for the 2015 event from the initial 30 after appealsfrom member countries of the SEA Games Federation during their meetingat the Raffles City Convention Centre, Singapore, last week.

The newly endorsed sports are rowing, equestrian, boxing, floorball, pentaque, and volleyball.

In all, 402 events will feature at next June's sports festival, the 28th edition of the biennial games.

Amongthem floorball, a hockey-like game popular in Singapore, will make itsdebut, while karate, weightlifting, and wrestling have been excluded,the organisers noted.

Floorball was a demonstration sport when Myanmar hosted the SEA Games last December.

It is an indoor game and combines elements of hockey and football. There are five field players and one goalkeeper on each team.

Netball will also be included for the first time since it debuted in Malaysia in 2001.

Outof the 36 sports, 34 are contested at the Asian Games, while 24 are ofthe Olympic pedigree. Only floorball and netball are not part of the twomain categories.

Vietnam's results would be strongly affectedfollowing the final programme changed by the organisers, who haveexcluded many of the events in which they exceled, including chess,vovinam, karate, weightlifting, and wrestling, while wushu events werereduced from 23 to 20.

Singapore also confirmed that they did nothave the capacity to hold sports, such as football, futsal, and sepaktakraw for women.

"Eighty percent of the venues are ready. All wehave to do is to showcase efficiency and organise things in a propermanner," Tan Eng Liang, the chairman of the SEA Games Federationexecutive committee, was quoted as saying on reuters.com.

Singapore,which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, will use thesoon-to-be-open 1 billion USD sports hub facility to welcome the June5-16 sports festival that returns to the country after a long gap of 22years.

The games are set to lure all the 10 members of the ASEANnations as well as the non-ASEAN state, East Timor, which firstparticipated in the games in 2003.

The Association of SoutheastAsian Nations, known as ASEAN, consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia,Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.-VNA

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