Vietnam’s Southeast Asian Games given May 2022 start date after Covid-19 spread brought under control
- Participating NOCs agree to reschedule Games after Covid-19 spread in the country brought under control
The regional Games, which feature 11 national Olympic committee teams competing in 520 events across 40 sports, will now be held in Hanoi during an as yet unspecified two week period in May 2022.
Vietnam suffered a huge spike in coronavirus cases earlier this year and the government introduced a raft of lockdown measure to minimise the outbreak. Almost 20 per cent of the Vietnamese population is now reported to be vaccinated.
The SEA Games have been held every two years since 1959 under the auspices of the Southeast Asian Games Federation and is supervised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA).
It has only been disrupted once in its history, when its 1963 edition in Cambodia was cancelled due to political turmoil in the country.
A spokesperson announced on Monday that the SEA Games Federation held a meeting where they accepted the Vietnamese Organising Committee’s proposal to rekindle the Games in May 2022.
The rearranged Games adds to an already packed international calendar of multi-sport events next year, with the Asian Games set for Hangzhou, China in September. That follows the Commonwealth Games, in which Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore participated in 2018, being held in Birmingham in July.
