Thailand scrambles to keep Asian Games in Bangkok

Thailand scrambles to keep Asian Games in Bangkok

BANGKOK (Reuter): Thai sports officials, fresh from running the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, said yesterday they were scrambling to keep the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok after Games officials threatened to hold them elsewhere.

Somchai Prasertsiriphan, governor of the Sports Authority of Thailand, said in an interview that the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) was not satisfied with Thailand's preparations for the next Asian Games, and had given Bangkok until Jan. 5 to prove it was able to run the sporting event.

He told Reuter Thai sports officials were doing everything they could to revamp current committees and make the needed changes to show the OCA that Thailand was serious about hosting the Games.

Somchai said a visit by top OCA officials in November was positive and he did not know they were dissatisfied with the preparations until he returned from the Chiang Mai SEA Games this week.

"We got a letter from the Sheik (Ahmed Al-Sabah), the president of the Olympic Council of Asia, after we got back from Chiang Mai," Somchai said.

The letter said the OCA would accept offers to host the Asian Games from other countries if Thailand did not submit a full progress report by Wednesday. That deadline was later extended until Jan. 5, Somchai said.

Local media reported the OCA was frustrated with the lack of information given by the Thais on their level of planning and preparation for the games, which are held every four years.

"We have been taken for a ride and we are not going to stand any more nonsense," Muthaleb Ahmed, managing director of the OCA, was quoted as saying in the Bangkok Post yesterday.

"The 44-member nations are up in arms and the members of the executive are angry," he said. "Now it is time to act. The OCA will not tolerate this ridiculous situation any longer."

The OCA was upset that Thailand had still not appointed complete organizing committees to oversee the games, although it has had five years to prepare since being awarded the games.

Somchai said most of Thailand's senior sports officials had been tied up with organization of the SEA Games and were unable to present a cohesive progress report on the Asian Games as quickly as the OCA wanted.

"I think if we reorganize the composition of the organizing committee that should satisfy the Olympic Council of Asia," Somchai said. "We have to solve this matter, then I think there will be no problem."

But OCA Treasurer Santiparb Tejavanija, who is from Thailand, said OCA members were shocked by Thailand's "lackadaisical attitude" and he was not confident the games would stay in Thailand.

"In the past five years Thailand has been too slow in organizing the games to Asian Games standard," he told a local radio station yesterday. "How can one expect anything to be done in the standard way in the next three years?"

The Bangkok Asian Games have been dogged by controversy since they were awarded in 1990 with several governments and companies bickering over which would construct the stadium, athletes' village and expressways needed to hold the games in the Thai capital.

In addition, a mass-transit system, slated to be partially completed in time for the games to help ease some of Bangkok's notorious traffic congestion, has barely begun construction.