Hosts Nepal on Tuesday officially rescheduled the date of the 13th South Asian Games set to be held simultaneously in Kathmandu and Pokhara.

Nepal Olympic Committee (NOC), National Sports Council (NSC) and Ministry for Youth and Sports jointly announced December 1-10 as the new dates on Tuesday. It is the fourth time that the date of the biannual has been pushed back from the original date, which was to take place in 2018.

“The meeting of the South Asian Olympic Council (SAOC) held recently in Thailand has approved the new dates as requested by the government of Nepal,” said NOC president Jeevan Ram Shrestha. The multi-event meet was originally scheduled for last year but was pushed back for a year upon Nepal’s request to prepare infrastructures that were damaged by the 2015 earthquake. It was then rescheduled twice this year, the latest date being March 9-18.

“Though SAOC had previously had approved March 9-18 date for the games, the Ministry for Youth and Sports (MoYS) later proposed September kick off in a bid to buy time for putting basic infrastructure in place,” said Shrestha. “In a recent SAOC meeting, we proposed the new date. The SAOC has clearly warned that the date could not be postponed any further” informed Shrestha.

“Works on developing infrastructure will end by August this year and the government is committed to hold the event by 2019,” said MoYS Secretary Krishna Prasad Devkota adding that representatives of their ministry had also attended the meeting in Thailand. According to Devkota, players selection will take place after the eighth National Games scheduled to be held in Mid Western Region. Ironically the formal date of the National Games is yet to be finalised. NSC is, however, planning to organise it from April 6.     

NSC Vice-president Pitambar Timsina informed that they have already handed over the Dashrath Stadium, the main venue to host the event that will feature opening and closing ceremony, to Chinese government for required facelift. The Chinese government will replace old synthetic track with new one, repair the broken floodlights, replace the manual scoreboard with digital ones and install digital sound system, informed Timsina. China has promised to hand over the Dashrath Stadium August.    

SAOC approved 27 games for SAG including athletics, basketball, boxing, archery, badminton, cycling, fencing, football, handball, judo, karate, kabaddi, shooting, squash, swimming, taekwondo, tennis, table tennis, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling, wushu, kho-kho, and golf. Nepal used their rights to include cricket and paragliding in SAG that brings athletes from eight South Asian nations together.