Football chaos brings curtain down on drama-filled SEA Games
Indonesia’s Komang Teguh Trisnanda (4) and Thailand’s Soponwit Rakyart (R) react as a battle breaks out on the sidelines of the boys’s soccer remaining match between Thailand and Indonesia throughout the thirty second Southeast Asian Video games (SEA Video games) in Phnom Penh on Might 16, 2023. (Picture by Nhac NGUYEN / AFP)
Almost two weeks of triumphs, tears and the occasional tantrum will come to an finish Wednesday when the Southeast Asian Video games shut in Cambodia, with Vietnam topping the ultimate medals desk.
Girls’s soccer gold capped a glittering Video games for Vietnam, who reigned over the medals desk to assert regional supremacy forward of Thailand and Indonesia.
Cambodia had been fourth — the primary time in 4 editions of the biennial Video games that the hosts didn’t come high of the pile, however their 81 golds had been an enormous enchancment for them on current years.
The sporting motion in Phnom Penh got here to a chaotic finish late Tuesday when Indonesia beat Thailand in a males’s soccer remaining that includes seven targets, 4 purple playing cards and two mass brawls.
The Thai soccer affiliation apologised and stated it might examine the skirmishes between the 2 sides which marred the gold-medal match.
The Video games formally shut later Wednesday.
After they opened on Might 5, Cambodia claimed their first ever athletics gold, Chhun Bunthorn successful the boys’s 800m and sparking shifting scenes on the end line as he toasted his late dad and mom.
“I’m very emotional,” he instructed reporters.
“My dad and mom handed away and I miss them tremendously. In the event that they had been nonetheless right here, they might have been very proud of my victory.”
There was extra emotion on the monitor when Bou Samnang broke down in tears after crossing the end line within the girls’s 5,000m — on their lonesome and practically six minutes after the race winner.
Movies of her crying and soaked by rain went viral and had been the defining picture of the Video games.
“I can say now I’m well-known,” the 20-year-old instructed AFP on the Morodok Techo Stadium, the scene of her unlikely rise to prominence, the place passers-by had been lining up for pictures along with her.
“Though I misplaced, they help me from the underside of their hearts.”
With the Asian Video games in China later this yr and the Paris Olympics in 2024, Southeast Asia’s world-class athletes acquired in some essential aggressive motion.
Philippine gymnast Carlos Yulo took two golds and two silvers and compatriot Ernest John Obiena received the pole vault for the third Video games operating.
Controversial guidelines imposed by the hosts, nevertheless, restricted the variety of occasions contested by prolific gymnasts comparable to Yulo, who received 5 golds and two silvers on the final Video games.
– Dash royalty reign –
4 of Vietnam’s 136 golds had been received by the star of the athletics monitor Thi Oanh Nguyen, who dominated the ladies’s 1,500m, 5,000m, 10,000m and three,000m steeplechase.
In addition they received the ladies’s soccer with a 2-0 victory within the remaining over Myanmar, and topped the gymnastics with 9 golds.
Vietnam did nicely too in fight sports activities, together with within the hosts’ conventional martial artwork of kun bokator.
Thailand had been greatest total within the athletics, notably dash king Soraoat Dapbang, who received the boys’s 100m and 200m.
Whereas the dominion’s medal hopes had been hobbled by its boycott of kun Khmer -– objecting to using that title for a sport extra extensively often known as Muay Thai — it did win 9 golds in boxing.
The controversial use of the Cambodian title for the “artwork of the eight limbs” is a testomony to how SEA Video games guidelines are typically form to the house nation.
The Philippines had been fifth within the medals desk however reclaimed gold in males’s basketball — the game enjoys big reputation within the nation and is likely one of the most coveted titles on the Video games.
Singapore got here sixth, led by their all-conquering swimmers and sprinter Shanti Pereira, who clinched girls’s 100m and 200m gold.
The following SEA Video games will probably be in Thailand in 2025.
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