Women’s break dancing likely to be axed

MANILA, Philippines — The Southeast Asian (SEA) Games Federation Sports and Rules Committee will review team events with three or less participating countries in a meeting tomorrow and women’s break dancing in dancesport will likely be struck out of the schedule because it only lists two entries.

Women’s water polo, men’s sepak takraw hoop and men’s recognized poomsae in taekwondo are team events with three competing countries but may be retained on condition no bronze medal is awarded. Under the rules of the SEAG Federation charter, a minimum of four countries must participate in a team event of a sport or in the case of an individual event, at least three.

SEAG Federation Sports and Rules Committee chairman Tom Carrasco, concurrently PHISGOC executive director, said tomorrow’s meeting will finalize the events. “As chairman, I’ll support the cancellation of women’s break dancing because only two countries are participating, Indonesia and the Philippines,” he said. “I’ll propose that team events with only three participating countries are accepted but on condition that only gold and silver medals will be at stake. This has been done in past SEA Games.”

There are 14 events in dancesport and break dancing is the only category exclusively for women. The other events are break dancing for men and 12 under mixed – Latin American samba, Latin American chachacha, Latin American rumba, Latin American pasa doble, Latin American jive, Latin American grade A, modern standard grade A, modern standard waltz, modern standard tango, modern standard foxtrot, modern standard quick step and modern standard Viennese waltz. Men’s break dancing has entries from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Break dancing has been nominated for inclusion in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding are other sports proposed for the Paris program. Break dancing and sport climbing were introduced at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires last year while skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing will make their debut in the Tokyo Olympics next year.

Dancesport will be held at the Royce Hotel in the Clark Freeport Zone on Sunday. Competition begins 10 a.m. with modern standard waltz. Women’s break dancing is scheduled from 1:30 to 2:10 p.m. but will be scratched if the SEAG Federation decides to cancel it.

The SEAG Federation will hold other committee meetings on medical and women’s sports tomorrow. The SEAG Federation Executive Committee will also be convened for a meeting.

After the submission of entries by number last March, only women’s baseball was scratched from the SEA Games schedule because it had only two participating countries. The Philippines would’ve entered a team if it were approved. Two weeks ago, the Philippine women’s baseball team took the bronze medal at the Asian Cup in Guangdong, China behind only World No. 1 Japan and World No. 3 Chinese-Taipei. The team would’ve bagged the gold without difficulty in the SEA Games. To promote gender equity, two events were included in the program with the concurrence of the participating National Olympic Committees – women’s water polo and women’s artistic gymnastics individual all-around. As it turned out, only three countries signed up for women’s water polo.

Carrasco said at the moment, the calendar has 530 events in 56 sports. The distribution of the events by cluster is as follows – Clark, 218 events or 41 percent, Metro Manila 196 events or 37 percent, Subic 85 events or 16 percent and Southern Luzon 31 events or six percent.