Vietnam blasts 'silat'

Vietnam blasts 'silat'

JAKARTA (JP): The Vietnamese press has called for the pencak silat event to be withdrawn from the 17th Southeast Asian Games after a spate of injuries during a recent national competition in Hanoi.

"The athletes lost too much blood and too many teeth," declared the official daily Lao Dong on Friday. This is the second time the martial art competition has been held in Vietnam.

Some 30 pencak silat athletes reportedly suffered injuries to the head and face. One male athlete, Hong Son, needed 13 stitches and his teammate, Van Dinh, had to have two of his teeth pulled.

"The sport is much more like a street brawl," another daily was quoted by the Oana news agency as commenting. The martial art was imported from Indonesia four years ago.

Vietnam is grooming 256 sports men and women for the South East Asian Games in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in December. It won four bronzes in the pencak silat competition in the 1993 Games in Singapore. (amd)