Most athletes ever for SEA Games

MANILA, Philippines — Registration of delegates for the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games is ongoing at the Savoy Hotel in Newport City, Pasay, and PHISGOC executive director Tom Carrasco said yesterday even as the final tally has still to be confirmed, this year’s 11-nation conclave will be the biggest in terms of participating athletes.

Carrasco said the entries by number submitted to PHISGOC went up to 10,956 but as of yesterday, the entries by name listed 8,981 or about 18 percent less. Of the entries by name, there were 5,928 athletes, 61 percent male, and 3,053 officials. “We’ve been validating the entries since May as some countries exceeded their allowable ceiling for officials which is a limit of up to 50 percent of the number of athletes,” said Carrasco. “The figures are still subject to revalidation with the continuing itemized review of entries and the delegates registration meeting at the Savoy Hotel. We expect a fluctuation of three to four percent.”

At the “Send-Off Ng Bayan” program organized by PSC at the newly-refurbished Ninoy Aquino Stadium last Wednesday, it was mentioned that host Philippines would field an army of 1,115 athletes backed by 753 coaches. Carrasco said the list of Philippines athletes is down to 1,094. The Philippines was represented by 497 athletes at the previous SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur two years ago. 

The largest participation of athletes in the SEA Games was in 2005 when the Philippines hosted for the third time. The registration was up to 5,336 athletes. In each of the last five SEA Games, there were less than 5,000 athletes who participated.  This year’s SEA Games will mark a record in participation.

Another record that will be made is in the number of sports. This year, there will be 56 sports in the SEA Games, including 10 making their debut – e-sports, obstacle course, surfing, kickboxing, jiu jitsu, modern pentathlon, skateboarding, kurash, sambo and underwater hockey. The most number of sports in a previous SEA Games was 44 in 2011 with Indonesia as host.

The record that will not be broken is the number of events. Indonesia set the mark with 545 events in 2011. This year, the SEA Games will feature 530 events, including 3x3 basketball for men and women. A week ago, three events in squash were scratched – men’s and women’s jumbo doubles and mixed doubles but took in team competitions for men and women for a net loss of one. But the total number of 530 events was unchanged as gymnastics added women’s artistic overall.

The schedule lists 22 sports with at least 10 events.  Athletics and aquatics, the compulsory sports under Category 1, show a combined 93 events. Under Category 2 for sports in the Olympics and Asian Games, the topnotchers are taekwondo with 22 events and gymnastics with 20. Wushu and judo feature 16 events each. Under Category 3 for all other sports, arnis tops the list with 20 events.

Carrasco, concurrently the SEA Games Federation sports and rules committee chairman, said under the rules, a host country must stage at least 22 sports. Another rule is no sport may exceed five percent of the total gold medals at stake except for aquatics, athletics and shooting.