VietNamNet Bridge – The Southeast Asian (SEA) Games Federation Council has finalised the coming SEA Games' programme with 36 sports, six more than what were announced months earlier.

Curtain call: The Singapore segment during the 27th SEA Games closing ceremony in Nay Pyi Taw last December. The state country will host the 28th Games next June. — Photo todayonline.com

Six additional sports were included in the games schedule for the 2015 event from the initial 30 after appeals from member countries of the SEA Games Federation during their meeting at the Raffles City Convention Centre, Singapore, last week.

The newly endorsed sports are rowing, equestrian, boxing, floorball, pentaque, and volleyball.

In all, 402 events will feature at next June's sports festival, the 28th edition of the biennial games.

Among them floorball, a hockey-like game popular in Singapore, will make its debut, while karate, weightlifting, and wrestling have been excluded, the organisers noted.

Floorball was a demonstration sport when Myanmar hosted the SEA Games last December.

It is an indoor game and combines elements of hockey and football. There are five field players and one goalkeeper on each team.

Netball will also be included for the first time since it debuted in Malaysia in 2001.

Out of the 36 sports, 34 are contested at the Asian Games, while 24 are of the Olympic pedigree. Only floorball and netball are not part of the two main categories.

Vietnam's results would be strongly affected following the final programme changed by the organisers, who have excluded many of the events in which they exceled, including chess, vovinam, karate, weightlifting, and wrestling, while wushu events were reduced from 23 to 20.

Singapore also confirmed that they did not have the capacity to hold sports, such as football, futsal, and sepak takraw for women.

"Eighty percent of the venues are ready. All we have to do is to showcase efficiency and organise things in a proper manner," Tan Eng Liang, the chairman of the SEA Games Federation executive committee, was quoted as saying on reuters.com.

Singapore, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, will use the soon-to-be-open 1 billion USD sports hub facility to welcome the June 5-16 sports festival that returns to the country after a long gap of 22 years.

The games are set to lure all the 10 members of the ASEAN nations as well as the non-ASEAN state, East Timor, which first participated in the games in 2003.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN, consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Source: Vietnam Plus