KUALA LUMPUR – Vietnam is still undecided on hosting of the 31st SEA Games that is supposed to be held from Nov 21-Dec 2 this year amid the COVID-19 scare.
Two weeks since the Vietnam Olympic Committee’s (VOC) proposal to postpone the biennial Games to May or June next year was rejected, the VOC again came back to the SEA Games Federation (SEAGF) meeting, held virtually today, without a solution.
And now they have requested for another two weeks before the next virtual meet-up on July 8, to get government confirmation on the fate of the Hanoi SEA Games.
Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) president Tan Sri Mohamad Norza Zakaria said the VOC had again proposed two options in today’s meeting, either to host the SEA Games at the end of this year or postpone it to the middle of 2022.
“Until today, VOC haven’t obtained confirmation from the government…Eight of the 11 member countries, including Malaysia are still objecting the postponement to next year due to various reasons,” he told Bernama when contacted.
“Difficult to speculate what will happen in the next two weeks, whatever decision that is obtained by VOC from the government, (it) must be communicated to the SEAGF Council, consisting of the presidents of the 11 National Olympic Committees involved, to endorse the decision,” he added.
Asked on the possibility of postponing the Hanoi Games to 2023, and Cambodia given the rights to host the 2025 edition, Mohamad Norza sounded pessimistic as Cambodia is prepared to the host the 2023 edition, while Thailand is in the midst of preparing for the 2025 edition.
He said solutions could only be discussed after getting a final decision from Vietnam.
Mohamad Norza previously had ruled out the postponement due to the overcrowding of events in 2022, including the Beijing Winter Olympics from Feb 4-20, Birmingham Commonwealth Games (July 28-Aug 8) and Hangzhou Asian Games (Sept 10-25).
Vietnam, set to host the SEA Games for the second time after the 2003 edition, have listed 520 events from 40 sports for this year’s Games.
The only time the biennial games has been cancelled was during 1963, when Cambodia couldn’t host the multisport games due to political instability.
