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.