The next Southeast Asian Games will reduce the number of Olympic sports.
Cycling, basketball, gymnastics, hockey, rowing and weightlifting are among Olympic sports at the current Southeast Asian Games that will be absent in Vientiane, Laos, in December 2009.
The games will retain events like tenpin bowling, petanque, billiards, dragon boat racing, sepak takraw, the more obscure martial arts of wushu, Muay Thai and pencak silat, and will resume the sport of juggling a shuttlecock with the feet.
PHOTO: AFP
There will be 25 disciplines compared to 43 in Nakhon Ratchasima.
The cutback is partly due to the landlocked country -- with no sailing, windsurfing or triathlon -- and also a lack of facilities in Vientiane.
Organizers also wanted to reduce the breadth of the games, with many events currently having small fields and weak competition.
Thailand swept the final day of medals, winning gold in men's, women's and mixed doubles tennis yesterday. In beach volleyball, Indonesia defeated Thailand in straight sets to take men's gold while Yupa Phokongploy and Kulna Kamoltip edged another Thai pair in the deciding third set to take the women's event.
Thailand topped the table with 183 gold medals at the games' closing ceremony yesterday.
It was the fourth straight games where the host nation had finished top of the standings.
Debate about home advantage reached boiling point here in boxing, where the Philippines forfeited six men's gold medal bouts in a protest at judging in the women's finals -- where its boxers lost out to Thai opponents in all five bouts that were decided on points.
The Philippines' protest spared its fighters having to compete with a world-class array of Thai boxers. The Philippines was considered to benefit from the judging at the Manila event in 2005.
The protest robbed the Games of a rare display of competitive athletes in gold medal competition. Manus Boonjamnong and his brother Non, Amnat Ruenroeng, Somjit Jongjohor, Pichai Sayota and Suriya Prasathinphimai will all be genuine threats for the Philippines at next year's Olympics in Beijing.
Aside from boxing, the only other Olympic gold prospects on display were in shooting and badminton.
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