Phl to bat for fewer SEA Games events

MANILA, Philippines - Whatever comes out of it, the Philippines will push for a fixed calendar of events, meaning fewer events, for the Southeast Asian Games starting in 2013 in Myanmar.

Philippine Sports Commission chairman Richie Garcia is in Indonesia with a meeting with the Asean sports ministers, and will take the opportunity to bat for the proposal.

Garcia said “it’s about time” for the members of the SEA Games Federation to agree and limit the number of disciplines as well as the number of events to a certain level.

Over the past few years, what has developed is the trend that the host country emerges as the overall champion because it has the luxury of putting in indigenous sports.

This gives the host country a tremendous advantage over its rival countries in that it gobbbles up the gold medals in the events it managed to include in the calendar.

“It’s about time we put up fewer sports in SEA Games,” said Garcia.

In the recent SEA Games in Indonesia, a total of 545 golds were staked in a total of 44 sports disciplines. It was the largest staging of the event in terms of gold medals disputed.

Indonesia was overall champion with 182 gold, 151 silver and 143 bronze medals, followed by Thailand (109-100-120), Vietnam (96-92-100), Malaysia (59-50-81), Singapore (42-45-73) and the Philippines (36-56-77).

When Manila hosted the event in 2005, there were 445 events contested in 40 sports. Garcia said he will bat for a fixed number of sports, and said it could even be less than 40.

“We will lobby for the sports to be limited to 30 maximum or even lower with the Olympic sports as the priority,” he said.

“It will even be more affordable for the host country and the teams. Less sports, the better. Let’s just choose the sports to be contested in the SEA Games.

“We cannot just include every sport in the SEA Games. Some countries have already agreed that there should be some limitation on the number of sports,” he added.

Phiippine Olympic Committee president Jose Cojuangco has something else in mind, and it concerns giving the medals, particularly the silver, corresponding points in the medal tally.

 “We must give importance to the silver medal in the next SEA Games. Otherwise, let’s just get rid of the silver. Let us give more weight to the silver medal by giving them corresponding points,” he said.