Criticism
The games is unique in that there are no official limits to the number of sports which may be contested, and the range may be decided by the organising host pending approval by the Southeast Asian Games Federation. Albeit for some core sports which must be featured, the host is also free to drop or introduce other sports.
This leeway has resulted in hosts maximising their medal hauls by dropping sports which are disadvantages to themselves relative to their peers, and the introduction of obscure sports, often at short notice, thus preventing most other nations from building up credible opponents. Some examples of these include:
- At the 2001 Southeast Asian Games, Malaysia introduced petanque, lawn bowls and netball
- At the 2003 Southeast Asian Games, Vietnam added fin swimming and shuttlecock
- In the 2005 Southeast Asian Games, the Philippines added arnis, a demonstration sport in 2003, with 6 sets of medals and it won 3 gold medals.
- At the 2007 Southeast Asian Games, Thailand added some new categories of sepak takraw and used a new kind of ball that had been used by their athletes for a year while other countries had never used it before. Thailand won nearly all sets of medal from that discipline.
- In the 2011 Southeast Asian Games, Indonesia dropped the team events in table tennis and shrunk the Shooting events to just 14 golds from 19 in 2009 and 33 in 2007. At the same time, Bridge, KenpÅ, Paragliding, Vovinam and wall climbing were introduced.
Read more about this topic: Southeast Asian Games
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