SEAG body to restrict hosts' sports choices

Zakki Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The South East Asian (SEA) Games Federation has agreed to restrict host nations' choices of sports to be included among the medal events in a bid to prevent gamesmanship, according to the National Sports Council (KONI).

Vietnam hosted the SEA Games in 2003, and the Philippines will host the 2005 edition of the biennial regional sporting showcase.

KONI secretary-general Djohar Arifin Husin said the federation, during a meeting last week in Manila, agreed to divide the sports into three categories, which would then be used to decide their inclusion among the medal events.

The ruling was taken with a view to keeping the SEA Games in touch with other multievent competitions such as the Asian Games and the Olympics.

The first category consists of track and field, and aquatics, whose inclusion in the SEA Games is compulsory because these are classified as Olympic sports.

The second category consists of 35 sports that are traditionally included in the Asian Games. The federation ruled that the host nation should include at least 14 sports from this category in the SEA Games.

The third category consists of 14 sports that are not included in the Olympics or the Asian Games, but which are popular in the region.

This category will enable host nations to include their traditional sports, of the permittable eight, among the medal events of the SEA Games.

The Philippines, for example, will include arnis, a traditional martial art from the country, when it hosts the event in 2005.

Djohar said this new policy, which will come into effect in 2007 when Thailand hosts the SEA Games, was meant to prevent host nations, in a bid to top the medal tally, from choosing traditional sports that appealed to few people outside of their country.

"To ensure the host of the 2007 Games complies with the regulation, the federation has formed an ad hoc team to assess the proposed sport events," he said.

The team will comprise five sports experts from five countries. Expected to be included on the team is Indra Kartasasmita of Indonesia, who heads the planning and budgeting department at KONI.

The 2005 SEA Games has announced a tentative list of 34 sports.

Tennis and weightlifting, which in the past have been gold mines for Indonesia, are not in the list. These two sports accounted for a combined eight golds in Vietnam for the Indonesian contingent, which finished third in the medal table behind Vietnam and Thailand for overall medals.