Myanmar closer to completing facilities

Myanmar closer to completing facilities

Thai officials satisfied with preparations for biennial SEA Games

Myanmar is almost ready for the 27th SEA Games to be held in December, Thai officials confirmed yesterday.

The biennial tournament will take place in the country for the third time with Nay Pyi Taw, Yagon and Mandalay being host cities.

Thai Olympic committee member Thana Chaiprasit, who visited Myanmar recently, said he was satisfied with the country's preparations for the Dec 11-22 tournament.

"They are about 90 per cent ready for the SEA Games," said Thana, who will be Thailand's chief of delegation during the event.

The 35,000-seat Zabuthiri main stadium in Nay Pyi Taw, to be used for the opening and closing ceremonies and men's football final, is almost complete with the athletes' village, which will house more than 4,000 people, will be complete soon, according to Thana.

Thana is impressed with other facilities such as transportation as the organisers will provide a special lane for participants.

China and South Korea are helping Myanmar with a scoring system and other hi-tech equipment, he said.

There will be about 900 Thai athletes and officials at the Games with about 600 in Nay Pyi Taw and Thailand plans to go there on chartered flights.

"Normally, there are no flights from Bangkok to Nay Pyi Taw. So we will organise chartered flights," said Thana.

Myanmar has caused an uproar among members as several 'standard sports', including tennis and gymnastics, have been dropped from this year's programme.

There will be 460 gold medals up for grabs in 33 sports.

There are compulsory sports, aquatics and athletics, as well as Olympic disciplines, such as archery, badminton, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrian, football, hockey, judo, rowing, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball and weightlifting.

There are also sports like bodybuilding, dragon boat, chess, pencak silat, vovinam, petanque, muay (Thai) and kempo.

Sports at the 27th SEA Games (medals available in brackets):

Aquatics (41), athletics (46), wushu (23), taekwondo (21), wrestling (21), chess (18), kempo (18), vovinam (18), sepak takraw (18), judo (18), dragon boat (17), karate-do (17), canoeing (16), pencak silat (15), muay (14), boxing (14), yachting (13), cycling (13), shooting (12), cue sports (12), weightlifting (11), petanque (11), archery (10), rowing (9), equestrian (6), badminton (5), bodybuilding (5), football and futsal (4), golf (4), hockey (2), table tennis (4), volleyball (2) and basketball (2).

Do you like the content of this article?
COMMENT