Bitter pill to swallow
Silat and track cycling omitted from Manila SEA Games
PETALING JAYA: Malaysia were runaway winners with 145 golds when they hosted the SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur last year but they can forget about reaching half of the figure in the 2019 edition in the Philippines.
Malaysia dominated in track cycling, diving and silat last year with the three sports contributing a total of 33 gold medals.
However, the organisers have decided to scrap track cycling and silat altogether.
Diving also saw a drastic reduction with only the 1m and 3m springboard events for individual proposed for aquatics at New Clark City.
Malaysia bagged 13 golds from cycling last year.
The track squad made a clean sweep of all 11 gold medals while two more were delivered by the men’s road cycling team.
Malaysia also ruled at the diving pool in KL with the divers splashing to a clean sweep of 13 gold medals. However, Malaysia later lost the women’s 3m springboard synchro gold medal after Wendy Ng Yan Yee, who partnered Nur Dhabitah Sabri, failed a doping test.
Malaysia were also overall champions in silat, winning a total of 10 gold medals.
Malaysian National Cycling Federation (MNCF) president Datuk Abu Samah Wahab said the Philippines organising committee have only agreed to include road, BMX and mountain bike for the cycling events for the 30th edition of the SEA Games.
“I have got in touch with the Philippines Cycling Federation on the omission of the track events although there is a velodrome in Manila that were used when they were the hosts back in 2005,” said Abu Samah.
“They need RM30mil to renovate the existing velodrome. Because of the costs involved, it will be hard to push for track cycling to be included.
“There is a technical meeting in Manila later this month and the final decision on the events should be known by then.
“If there is no track cycling, we will have to drastically reduce the medal targets,” he said.
The Philippines have announced a record hosting of 56 sports from Nov 30-Dec 11.
Among the sports included are obscure sports such as arnis, jujitsu, kurash, sambo and floorball while eSports will also be making its medal debut in the SEA Games.
The previous record was 44 sports when Indonesia hosted the SEA Games in 2011.