Big performers mined medal-rich sports

NAYPYITAW—Vietnam was a force in athletics and shooting; Singapore and Malaysia struck hard in aquatics; Thailand was superior in almost every sport.

What do these countries have in common? They all focused on medal-rich sports.

At the just-concluded 27th Southeast Asian Games here, athletics offered 46 gold medals and aquatics (swimming, diving and water polo) 41. Non-contact sports such as canoeing, shooting and weightlifting had 16, 12 and 11 golds, respectively.

Combine all of them and you have 126 gold medals.

Focus on these sports and add the haul in combat disciplines taekwondo, boxing, wushu, wrestling, karate-do, muay and judo, among others, and any country could be in the hunt for the overall championship.

Thailand, the overall titlist of the Games for the 11th time, ruled athletics with 17 golds and was also impressive in swimming (seven golds), boxing (7), chess (7), judo (7) and weighlifting (six). The Thais wound up with 107 gold, 94 silver and 80 bronze medals.

Exceptional in gymnastics in the 2011 Games in Indonesia, Vietnam shifted its focus to athletics and wrestling with 10 golds each. In shooting, Viets had seven to land second overall with a harvest of 73-85-86.

Indonesia, the overall champion in 2011, achieved a sprinkling of victories in chess, cycling, rowing and swimming with five golds each and athletics (six) to finish fourth with 64-80-107.

Singapore, which carted away 17 swimming golds two years ago, got away with 11 this time.

The Singaporeans also nailed five in sailing, allowing the tiny city-state 5 million people to finish sixth overall, a rung ahead of the Philippines.

Malaysia ended up fifth (43-38-76) with 12 golds in aquatics, four in swimming and eight in diving.