MELBOURNE (REUTERS) – Australia will not be taking over a proposal to ship athletes to this 12 months’s Asian Games for the primary time as not one of the invited sports activities federations expressed an curiosity in going to Hangzhou, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) mentioned on Tuesday (April 26).
The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) had invited a quota of round 300 athletes and 150 assist employees from Oceania nations, together with Australia and New Zealand, to compete on the Sept 10-25 Games within the japanese Chinese metropolis.
“We don’t have any athletes going,” an AOC spokesman instructed Reuters on Tuesday.
A New Zealand Olympic Committee spokeswoman additionally confirmed the nation would not take part on the Games.
The AOC’s outgoing president John Coates, an International Olympic Committee vice-president and one of many world’s most influential sports activities directors, had lengthy pushed for Australia’s athletes to be included within the Asian Games to expose them to stiffer competitors.
The quadrennial Asian Games are second in dimension solely to the Summer Olympics.
The Hangzhou Games have been below a cloud since an outbreak of Covid-19 in Shanghai, some 175 kilometres northwest of town.
A media report final week quoted the OCA’s director-general as saying there was a risk the Games could be postponed due to the Covid scenario.
Most worldwide sporting occasions in China have been postponed or cancelled because the begin of the pandemic, with the notable exception of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which went forward below strict controls in February.
