KUALA LUMPUR: Philippines, the 2019 SEA Games hosts, are hoping to surpass the brilliant work done by Singapore and Malaysia in organising the biennial games, this coming November.
Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organising Committee (Philsgoc) executive director Ramon Suzara revealed that they were delighted to see Singapore and Malaysia making significant milestones as SEA Games hosts in 2015 and 2017.
“We have a master plan for the SEA Games which is even to Asian Games level but organising 56 sports involving 523 events would be a huge challenge for us.
“There is a lot of renovation works going on right now, but we have reached 50 percent completion and by June, we hope all the renovation works will be completed before we test several venues, especially for athletics and aquatics prior to the competition proper,” he told reporters when met after giving a special briefing to 40 Malaysian National Sports Associations, here, yesterday.
On the same note, Ramon said that Philsgoc will evaluate each appeal from member countries regarding the reduced number of sports that would be contested in the 2019 SEA Games.
The hosts were reported to have reduced the number of events in a few sports, causing a storm of protests from SEA Games Federation (Seagf) members including Malaysia.
“I know there is a lot of appeals from the National Olympic Committees including Malaysia, but as long it does not involve additional cost, then we are okay with it.Some sports are sharing venues with other sports,” he added.
Meanwhile, Olympic Council of Malaysia president Datuk Seri Mohamad Norza Zakaria revealed that any changes including addition of events was subject to requests by Philippine NSAs.
He added that the number of events Malaysia will be competing in would be finalised by next month because the deadlines for confirmation of events and athletes were July and September respectively.
The Games will be held from Nov 30 -Dec 11 in four clusters – Manila, Clark, Subic and BLT (Batangas, La Union and Tagaytay). – Bernama
