The Star : The journey begins for 2017 SEA Games athletes

BY S. RAMAGURU

KUALA LUMPUR: More than 842 athletes have started training for the 2017 Kuala Lumpur SEA Games.

Ab Jalil (right) with National Sports Council (NSC) acting director of athletes department Jefri Ngadirin reading the Kita Juara pamphlet at NSC on Thursday. - Bernama

The athletes – 577 full-timers and 265 part-timers – come under the National Sports Council’s “Kita Juara” programme.

NSC deputy director-general Datuk Ab Jalil Abdullah said the programme will have three phases.

“The target, as the name suggests, is to be champions at the 2017 SEA Games. The first phase now (September, 2015 to September, 2016) involves the identification of the athletes and the hiring of coaches to oversee the respective programmes.

“Under the second phase (October, 2016 to March, 2017), we will trim the number of athletes as we want the best for the Games.

“This batch of athletes will then attend the last phase of training from April 2017 till the start of the Games in August,” added Jalil.

He said the 842 athletes came from the 37 sports to be contested at the Games.

“But the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) have since informed us that they’ve included two more sports – judo and canoeing – for the Games. So there will now be an increase in the number of athletes.

“There will be a total of 177 officials involved in the programme. Eleven are technical directors, 59 foreign coaches, 80 local coaches, 14 part-time coaches and 13 support staff.

“The athletes will also be sent for foreign stints as well as compete in local competitions. They will also attend seminars, talks, motivational camps and social activities. This will be done in stages,” added Jalil.

The 39 sports under the programme are athletics, aquatics, weightlifting, badminton, cycling, bodybuilding, netball, basketball, billiards and snooker, football, volleyball, equestrian, gymnastics, golf, ice hockey, field hockey, karate, cricket, fencing, lawn bowls, ice skating, archery, shooting, sailing, pencak silat, petanque, table tennis, polo, rugby, sepaktakraw, water-skiing, squash, taekwondo, tennis, bowling, boxing, triathlon, wushu and judo.