KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 — Ten countries have appealed to Vietnam, the host of next year’s 31st edition of the SEA Games, to include 11 sports currently not on the provisional list.

The appeal was made at today’s virtual meeting of the SEA Games Federation (SEAGF) Sport and Rules Committee and the 11 sports are indoor hockey, netball, sailing, tenpin bowling, squash, lawn bowls, cricket, rugby — which are all considered Malaysia’s golden pot — esports, skateboard as well as sambo, a Soviet origin combat sport.

The SEAGF Sport and Rules Committee will table its proposals and recommendations to the SEAGF Executive Committee and SEAGF Council, which will meet virtually tomorrow (July 22) for further discussions.

All 11 countries attended today’s meeting, which was chaired by Vietnam Sports Administration vice-chairman Tran Duc Phan. Malaysia was represented by Olympic Council of Malaysia’s (OCM) secretary general Datuk Mohd Nazifuddin Najib and Datuk Sieh Kok Chi (as SEAGF honourary member).

OCM said in a statement that Vietnam provided a detailed briefing regarding the 36 sports that it was proposing for the 2021 edition, adding that it also presented the venues, stating that some would be outside Hanoi, with the furthest distance being 150 km from Hanoi.

"It must be noted that the prerogative on the number of sports to be contested lies with the host country. In 2015 in Singapore, a total of 34 sports with 402 gold medals were on offer. At the 2017 edition in Kuala Lumpur, we had 38 sports and 404 gold medals. In Manila (2019), 56 sports with 530 gold medals were on offer,” it said.

OCM said that just like the 2015 (Singapore) and 2017 (KL) Games, the Vietnam Games in Hanoi won’t have a Games Village either and all the contingents would be housed at hotels.

Based on the provisional list, the sports that will be contested in Vietnam are athletics, aquatics (swimming and diving), archery, badminton, basketball, boxing, canoe, cycling (road and mountain bike), dancesport, fencing, football/futsal, golf, gymnastics, handball, volleyball, judo, karate, rowing, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling, billiards and snooker, chess/xiangqi (Chinese chess), Muay, pencak silat, petanque, sepak takraw, finswimming, bodybuilding, wushu, kurash, kickboxing, vovinam (Vietnamese martial arts).

The Vietnam SEA Games is scheduled to be held from November 21 to December 2, 2021. — Bernama