At least five events were removed from the calendar of events that will be played in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
Tom Carrasco, senior deputy director general of the Philippine SEA Games Organizing Committee, said this Thursday following the first technical delegates’ meeting at the Diamond Hotel in Manila.
The five events from three sports disciplines were done after the delegates spent a day doing some fine-tuning on the Games’ calendar.
“It was a fine-tuning process. Some of the events were not needed and removed,” said Carrasco.
Among those taken out of the list were two events in kurash, one in underwater hockey and another in sambo.
The number of sports disciplines is still at 56, but the number of events is down to 521, from 529.
Earlier, delegates talked about the possibility of having only 51 sports to be featured.
But the additional sports were retained after kurash, e-sports, surfing, skateboarding and jujitsu sought formal inclusion from their respect international federations.
There will also be three demonstration events, one in esports, and two in chess.
The Games will be held in Clark Green City, Subic and Metro Manila.
So far, Category 1 events such as athletics will have 42 gold medals at stake, while aquatics is offering 43.
There will be 42 Category 2 events, which include archery, badminton, baseball/softball, basketball, billiards, 10-pin bowling, boxing and canoe/traditional boat race.
Then, there’s chess, cycling, dance sport, fencing, football, golf, gymnastics, handball, hockey, ice hockey, ice skating, judo, karatedo, modern pentathlon, muay, pencak silat, polo, rowing, rugby sevens, sailing/windsurfing and sepak takraw. Also included are skateboarding, shooting, soft tennis, squash, surfing, table tennis, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling and wushu.
In Category 3 are arnis, esports, floorball, jujitsu, kickboxing, kurash, lawn bowls/petanque, netball, obstacle course, sambo/vovinam, underwater hockey and wakeboarding.