Postponement of SEA Games 2021
The Southeast Asian Sports Council has agreed to postpone the 31st SEA Games - scheduled to be held later this year - due to the complicated developments of Covid-19 in the region.
The decision was adopted during an online meeting of the Southeast Asian Sports Council with the Olympic Committees of member countries.
Previously, in an online meeting on June 9, the Vietnam Olympic Committee proposed postponing the 31st SEA Games and postponing the event to July 2022.
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| SEA Games 31 may be postponed to 2022. |
Covid-19 has broken out again in Vietnam, with thousands of community infections since April 27. That reality, combined with the complicated developments of the epidemic in many Southeast Asian countries, has affected athletes' training, while commercial marketing campaigns have also found it difficult to achieve the desired results.
Ensuring health care for approximately 20,000 athletes, coaches, officials, referees, and logistics staff of sports delegations, not to mention fans, is also a major challenge. In that situation, organizing the 2021 SEA Games as scheduled this year becomes impossible.
This is the second time since the SEA Games were established in 1959 that the Games will not be held in an odd year. In 1963, the Games were also cancelled due to political circumstances in Cambodia. The 2023 SEA Games will take place in Cambodia in May.
The 31st SEA Games was originally scheduled to take place from November 21, 2021 to December 2, 2021 in 12 provinces and cities including Hanoi, Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, Ha Nam, Hai Duong, Hoa Binh, Vinh Phuc, Phu Tho, Hai Phong, Nam Dinh, Ninh Binh and Quang Ninh. The Games will feature 40 events, mostly Olympic events.
At the 30th SEA Games in the Philippines in 2019, Vietnam ranked second overall with 98 gold medals, behind the host Philippines. This was the first time Vietnam, not the host, ranked above Thailand on the medal table.
