High-ranking Bahrain Olympic Committee (BOC) representatives attended the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) General Assembly meeting in Manila.
BOC acting general secretary Abdulrahman Askar, along with sports advisor Abduljalil Asad, travelled to the Far East for the two-day programme, which also featured the 64th OCA Executive Board meeting.
The General Assembly meeting, held at the Philippine International Convention Centre, featured reports from the OCA standing committees and organizing committees of upcoming games.
They include the Eighth Asian Winter Games in Sapporo and Obihiro, Japan, due to take place in February 2017 and involve 1,200 athletes from 30 NOCs. There will be 11 disciplines in five sports.
Turkmenistan will host the Fifth Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2017 in the new Ashgabat Olympic Complex, which is being built in three phases.
Organisers of the Third Asian Youth Games plan to hold the event in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, from August 18 to 26, 2017, while the Fourth Asian Youth Games 2021 will be held in Surabaya.
Early on, Shaikh Ahmed chaired the 64th meeting of the OCA Executive Board; he congratulated Tokyo on winning the bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games, which will come two years after Korea hosts the Olympic Winter Games at PyeongChang in 2018.
The OCA President also spoke of the Fourth Asian Beach Games in Phuket, Thailand, in November, and said the OCA had set a world trend in this format as other continents were following the initiative.
The Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), in conjunction with Sport Accord and the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), was planning to hold a World Beach Games.
The Phuket organisers later made a presentation during the Executive Board meeting, in which they showed that 32 disciplines in 23 sports will be contested between November 14 and 23, making it the biggest Asian Beach Games in history in terms of sports and participants.
Shaikh Ahmad also highlighted the increasing influence of Central Asia in Asian and world sport, as Kazakhstan held the Asian Winter Games in 2011 and has bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2022, while Turkmenistan is organising the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2017 featuring 63 NOCs from OCA and Oceania.
The OCA Athletes’ Committee reported that 33 of 45 NOCs now had their own committee representing athletes, and Shaikh Ahmad said Kuwait would be hosting an Athletes’ Forum for Asia, Africa and Oceania.
The next GA will take place at Incheon, Korea, this September on the sidelines of the 17th Asian Games, Ashgabat in Turkmenistan; will host the 2015 event, while the 2016 OCA GA was awarded to Cambodia.