The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) have granted extensions to both the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) and also the Sepaktakraw Association of Malaysia (PSM) in naming their athletes to the SEA Games 2017 in August.
With 72 days to go to the commencement of the 29th SEA Games, the OCM held two days of meetings with 30 sports associations this week in order to allow the various National Sports Associations (NSA) to name their athletes.
“Over the past few days, we’ve been dealing with 30 sports associations for the individual selections. For the team event, it has been scheduled for 8 July, the day of the draw,” said OCM president Tunku Tan Sri Imran Tuanku Ja’afar.
“We have selected 558 individual athletes where 319 are men and 139 are women. There are 200 officials of which 164 are men and 36 are women.
“Most of them will finalise the list next week. The very last day of registering the athletes will be 30 June. But there is a process where we need to key in their details for their accreditations and so forth, so we have asked the associations to hand in the list earlier.”
Also at the press conference was Malaysian Chef de mission of the Kuala Lumpur 2017 Games, Datuk Marina Chin, who said: “being the head of the contingent, I have to project the expectations to everybody that I expect them to win the gold”.
“My expectation is for the athletes to do their best and I believe if they do their best, they will win. As long as they deliver their personal best and even if they don’t win a medal, that is good enough for me.” – BY ALVIN OH
