Hectic schedule prompts Asia to postpone next Beach Games
THE Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) has rescheduled two of its biggest regional events and introduced limits on the number of athletes allowed to compete in the region’s top multi-sports competition.
With Asia already set to stage the next three Olympics and a host of world championships over the next decade, OCA officials have decided to streamline some of their major regional events, which have grown spectacularly from humble beginnings.
The Asian Beach Games, currently taking place in Vietnam, will now be held every four years instead of every two. Founded in 2008, the next edition was supposed to take place in 2018 but has been postponed until 2020.
The 2017 Asian Youth Games, due to be held in Jakarta, will now take place in 2021. The Games, which were first held in 2009, were originally due to take place in Sri Lanka but were to switched to Indonesia, mainly as a test event for the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang.
Indonesian officials told the OCA General Assembly yesterday they would stage a smaller test event in 2017 and then the Youth Games at Surabaya four years later.
OCA president Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah also announced limits on the number of competitors at the Asian Games. This is second only in size to the Olympics with more than 10,000 competitors and 5,000 officials from 45 countries and regions as well as 4,000 technical staff, 8,000 media and 30,000 volunteers.
Until now, countries have been allowed to enter as many athletes as they liked, but the OCA said each nation would be restricted to a maximum of two competitors in each individual event.
“Otherwise we will have nine from one country and none from other countries,” Sheikh Ahmad told the assembly.
“We are getting the best two from each NOC [National Olympic Committee] and we are giving a chance to other NOCs to win medals.”
The Indonesian organising committee for the 2018 Asian Games said preparations were on schedule. But one of the planned sports, surfing, had been dropped because the waves were not big enough at either Jakarta or Palembang.
The general assembly also agreed to set up five regional offices while it tries to resolve its long-running dispute with the government in Kuwait which houses the OCA headquarters.
Kuwait will remain the subcentre for West Asia while ad- ditional offices will be established in Bangkok, Almaty, Delhi, Nansha in China and Lausanne, where the International Olympic Committee is based.
Kuwait was banned from competing in the Rio Olympics after the government was accused of interference in its national Olympic Committee, and the contract for the OCA to remain at its headquarters in Kuwait remains in limbo.
Meanwhile, the assembly yesterday named Japan’s central Aichi prefecture and its capital city Nagoya as co-hosts of the 2026 Asian Games, add- ing another major event to the country’s bulging international sports calendar.
OCA formally endorsed the bid after Aichi Prefecture Governor Hideaki Ohumra and Nagoya City Mayor Takashi Kawamura presented their joint offering to the assembly in Danang.
Kawamura promised that the Games would be fun, and even serenaded the assembly with a verse from the Elvis Presley song Can’t help falling in love to prove the point.
Both men emphasised the strength of Japan’s economy and advanced technology as well as the country’s successful record of staging major sports events.
As the lone bidder for the Games, Japan’s proposal was rubber-stamped by the assembly and the host contract signed by the OCA and the bid delegates.
The OCA had originally planned to choose the 2026 Asian Games host in 2018 but brought the vote forward to provide some certainty to the region’s crammed sporting calendar which includes three Olympic events over the next eight years.
“The roadmap of our main event and sports calendar is very stable,” Sheikh Ahmad told the assembly in the Vietnamese city.
“Asia will host a lot of international events for a lot of international federations... so we want to try and make a very stable program for our different events.”