VietNamNet Bridge – The host of the Southeast Asian Games 2011 – Indonesia – has not only removed women’s football but also some other sports in which Vietnam is capable of winning gold medals and replaced them with obscure sports.

The games will open on November 11 but the host country has shown its ambition to be the champion from now on. Early this year, Indonesia released the list of sports of the event, which has many sports that have never appeared at the SEA Games, for instance playing cards or climbing, kenpo, and roller-skating. Some sports such as application shooting are very obscure to other countries and especially to Vietnam.

Indonesia removed around 20 categories which are Vietnam’s strong points, including important sport categories at the Olympics, such as pistol and sport pistol shooting, which Vietnam won medals at the Asian Games 2010.

Vietnam may lose nearly ten gold medals at the upcoming SEA Games because Indonesia rejected some shooting categories.

For cycling, pantenque, aerobic and wrestling, Indonesia rejected some categories in which Vietnam won gold medals at recent SEA Games.

For its traditional martial arts – pencak silat, Indonesia also cut off five weight categories that Vietnam is the champion for, women’s 50kg, 75kg, men’s 80kg, 85kg, 95kg.

Experts said that SEA Games 2011 would be a hard one for Vietnam to realize its goal of entering the top three because of the elimination of 20 categories in which Vietnam is a strong contender .

Indonesia plans to organize 44 sports with 542 sets of medals. Vietnam can compete for 28-31 sports and it may win goal medals for 24 sports.

The sports that Vietnam participate: athletics, swimming, diving, archery, badminton, billiards & snooker, canoeing/kaya, cycling, boxing, pantenque, fencing, football, judo, chess, rowing, vovinam, sepak takraw, shooting, taekwondo, table tennis, tennis, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling, wushu, karate and gymnastics.

PV