SE Asia in dress rehearsal for Atlanta Olympics
SE Asia in dress rehearsal for Atlanta Olympics
CHIANG MAI, Thailand (AFP): Former British distance runner
Yvonne Danson joins more than 4,000 home-grown athletes in this
Thai resort for the 10-nation Southeast Asian Games from Saturday
in the last major rehearsal for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Hosts Thailand will be playing for high stakes, both on and
off the field in the Dec. 9-17 meet, hoping that the country's
economic miracle will translate into sporting prowess.
It is the 50th anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's
ascension to the throne, and Thailand will be keen to unseat
regional powerhouse Indonesia for the overall title, officials of
the Indonesian National Sports Committee said.
Indonesia, Thailand as well as Malaysia, Singapore and the
Philippines are hoping the biennial games will bring their
sporting standards a step closer toward Olympic levels.
To boost its medal chances, Singapore will be parading Danson,
36, a 1994 Commonwealth Games marathon bronze medalist who won a
Singapore passport in September and will now be aiming for a
brace of golds in the women' marathon and 10,000 meters.
Deprived of retired track queen Lydia de Vega, the Philippines
tried to buy instant athletics success, putting up US$42,000 in
training funds for David Bunevacz, an American of Hungarian and
Filipino parentage.
But Manila's plans came to grief because the athlete does not
have a Filipino passport.
Southeast Asians still have a ways to go to achieving world
class status in glamor sports like athletics and swimming. But in
a few lesser-known disciplines their athletes are close to, if
not already there.
Indonesia's women archers, led by Nurfitiyana Lantang, and
world champion badminton shuttler Susi Susanti, for instance, or
Malaysian bowler Shalin Zulkifli. However, most of their events
are not Olympic sports.
Thai and Filipino boxers usually snare at least one of the
lesser Olympic medals.
For Brunei, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, the main goal will be
to improve on their previous showing in Singapore in 1993. "Our
team's goal in this tournament is to reach or exceed the results
made in the last Games," Vietnamese delegation chief Doan Thao
said.
It will also be the "coming out" party into the world of
international sports for Cambodia, emerging from 25 years of
civil war. The 57 athletes "look forward to seeing what
international competition is like," said Diamal Faye, adviser to
Phnom Penh's Olympic committee.
The meet will feature unusual local sports, notably sepak
takraw, a form of volleyball with the feet which features
breathtaking acrobatic moves that rival the best that soccer
target men can offer.
In all 29 events will be contested, with the Games being a
perfect stage to have sports indigenous to the region, like sepak
takraw and pencak silak, a martial art, gain Olympic recognition.
To snare the overall title, the Thais are fielding the most
athletes with 641, led by U.S.-trained swim star and local hero
Ratapong Sirisanon. But local commentators say the race with
Indonesia is "too close to call."
It is the first time the Thais is hosting the Games outside
Bangkok, which will be busy with the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations summit. The Chiang Mai Games will be a virtual dry
run for the organizers of the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games.
Already, Thailand's unfortunate identification with AIDS and
the commercial sex industry has become an embarrassing
distraction.
Philippine sports officials angrily disclaimed a report that
all their 578 athletes and officials will be armed with condoms.
Indonesia bluntly warned its athletes to abstain from sex on
grounds that it would break their concentration and that they
risked contracting AIDS.