OCM to appeal for more sports in SEA Games

KUALA LUMPUR: The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) will appeal to the SEA Games Federation (SEAGF) to include a number of sports, axed by the Philippine SEA Games Organising Committee (PHISGOC) from the list of the previous edition hosted by Malaysia.

OCM secretary-general, Datuk Mohd Nazifuddin Mohd Najib said the umbrella body would discuss with national sports associations (NSAs) and national sports councils (NSCs) to decide on the number of sports and events to appeal.

“The first list is a preliminary list from the hosts but they are expected to include more (events). We will definitely work with NSAs and NSCs to appeal most of the sports we did well in SEA Games.

“We will inform NSAs to submit their appeals to us. But sports that are not popular in Philippines will be a challenge (to be included). But sports that are popular, like tennis, ice skating and martial arts have a good chance to be listed,” he said when contacted by Bernama.

On Thursday, after two days of SEA GF meetings, the PHISGOC released the first list of 30 sports for the 30th SEA Games scheduled to be held on November 30 to December 10, 2019 in three cluster cities, namely Clark, Subic and Metro Manila.

The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) were given till June 13 to submit their appeals and suggestions for additional sports to be included in the 2019 SEA Games.

Among the sports dropped are hockey, table tennis, rugby, petanque, lawn bowls, netball, cricket, water ski as well as track cycling.

In a statement, OCM said the hosts had excluded badminton, but later reinstated the sport after receiving strong objections from five NOCs, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand.

The hosts had also added new sports, which were not contested in Kuala Lumpur SEA Games, namely baseball, judo/jujitsu, wrestling/kurash, arnis (martial arts from the Philippines) and dancesport.