SAOC decides to postpone SAG until March 2024

KARACHI: The South Asian Olympic Council (SAOC) member nations on Tuesday agreed that the 14th South Asian Games should be postponed until March 2024.

The body decided this in a meeting held on the sidelines of the General Assembly meeting of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) in Cambodia on Tuesday.

Pakistan Olympic Association's (POA) chief Lt Gen (retd) Arif Hasan and secretary Khalid Mehmood attended the meeting. Arif is also the vice-president of the OCA.

Khalid told The News from Cambodia that various matters, including the flood situation in Pakistan, were discussed.

The participants agreed that it was not easy to feature in the Asian Games and the South Asian Games one after another and to manage finances.

He said that it was unanimously decided that the 14th South Asian Games, which were earlier scheduled in 2023, should be postponed until March 2024.

Khalid said that Pakistan was told that it should inform the member states of the SAOC about the new dates of the biennial event.

“We told them that after consultation with the government back home we would let the member nations know about the new dates,” Khalid said.

Pakistan has been given a list of 28 disciplines from which it will reduce one discipline but no one which was part of the previous edition held in Nepal in 2019.

The spectacle, which Pakistan will host, will have 27 disciplines as usual.

Pakistan wanted to host the event in October and November of 2023 but the rescheduling of the 19th Asian Games to September and October of 2023 forced the SAOC to shift the event to March 2024.