By Kristel Satumbaga
Annie Ramirez, left, and Meggie Ochoa are the country’s two gold medalists in the previous AIMAG edition. (From Annie Ramirez’s Facebook account)
The Olympic Council of Asia recently announced the new schedule for the 6th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) that Thailand is hosting in two cities.
In a letter from OCA Director General Husain Al-Musallam to the National Olympic Committee of Thailand, the agreed schedule will be on May 21 to 30, 2021.
The competition will be held in Bangkok and Pattaya.
“We are delighted to confirm the dates with the local organizing committee and the NOC of Thailand so quickly after signing the host city contract,” said Al-Musallam in a statement posted on the OCA website.
“We appreciate that 2021 is a busy year because of the new dates for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, but we have managed to find a slot in the last week of May that is still two months before the Olympics.”
Twenty-eight sports plus two demonstration sports will be competed in the quadrennial event last held in 2017 in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. They are: indoor athletics, cue sports, bowling, dancesport, chess, futsal, roller sports/sport climbing, short course swimming, muay, jujitsu, BMX cycling, sepak takraw, kurash, floorball, net ball, indoor hockey, karate, esports, badminton, pencak silat, cheerleading, sambo, indoor rowing, indoor volleyball, basketball 3×3, traditional wrestling and kickboxing.
The two demo sports are: teqball and air sport (indoor drone).
Teqball is played on a curved table tennis-sized table, testing football skills such as ball control and heading over a net.
AIMAG is a merger of two former OCA multisport events, the Asian Indoor Games and the Asian Martial Arts Games in 2013. It is the second largest Asian multisport event after the Asian Games with 62 nations participating.
In the previous edition, the country went home with two gold medals courtesy of jujitsu artists Meggie Ochoa and Annie Ramirez, as well as 14 silver and 14 bronze medals.
