Viva_Viet
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The games is unique in that it has no official limits to the number of sports to be contested, and the range can be decided by the organizing host pending approval by the Southeast Asian Games Federation. Albeit for core sports that must be featured, the host is also free to drop or introduce other events.[11]
This leeway has resulted in hosts maximizing their medal hauls by dropping sports disadvantageous to themselves relative to their peers and the introduction of obscure sports, often at short notice, thus preventing most other nations from building credible opponents. Examples of these include:
- At the 2001 Southeast Asian Games, Malaysia introduced pétanque, and netball.
- At the 2003 Southeast Asian Games, Vietnam added fin swimming and shuttlecock, and had the wushu offer 28 golds from 16 in 2001.
- In the 2005 Southeast Asian Games, the Philippines added arnis, a demonstration sport in 2003, with six sets of medals, and it won three golds. Also added were baseball, dancesport and softball.
- At the 2007 Southeast Asian Games, Thailand added categories of sepak takrawand used a new kind of ball used by its athletes for a year but never used by other countries. Futsal was also added. Thailand won nearly all medals in the event.[12]
- In the 2011 Southeast Asian Games, Indonesia dropped the team events in table tennis and shrunk the medals offered in shooting to just 14 golds from 19 in 2009 and 33 in 2007. At the same time, bridge, kenpō, paragliding, vovinam and wall climbing were introduced.
- In the 2013 Southeast Asian Games, Myanmar introduced its indigenous sport Chinlone. The host won six of eight gold medals in the event. Sittuyin, a traditional form of Burmese chess that other competing nations were unfamiliar with, was included as a traditional chess number along with common chess competition number.[13]
- In the 2017 Southeast Asian Games, Malaysia introduced cricket, indoor hockeyand three Winter Olympics sports, namely figure skating, short track speed skatingand ice hockey.[14]
