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| Volunteers and athletes dance at the 28th SEA Games Closing Ceremony. Photo: SINGSOC |
The 28th Southeast Asian Games closed in spectacular fashion at
Singapore's new national Stadium on Tuesday, bringing down the curtain on
nearly two weeks of non-stop sporting action at the region's biggest
multi-sports event.
Singapore president Tony Tan officially declared the Games over after
Tan Chuan-Jin, the president of the SEA Games Federation, delivered an
emotional closing speech in which he described the last two weeks as
“extraordinary.”
“These Games will be a memorable one for many of us for years to come,”
Tan Chuan-Jin said. “It has been made possible by all the countries from our
region.”
Tan Chuan-Jin also delivered a moving tribute to the victims of the
Sabah earthquake and spoke about the spirit of friendship between the 11 ASEAN
countries.
He thanked the thousands of volunteers who had made the games such a
great success and cited two athletes for special attention: the 11-year-old
Myanmar swimmer Oo Shun Lei Maw, who became a hit despite being unable to keep
up with her older opponents, and the Singaporean marathon runner Ashley Liew,
who stopped and waited for his rivals to catch up with him after they took a
wrong turn on the route.
“These are the people and events that made the Games,” he said. “This
is the spirit of ASEAN and we have witnessed it at the SEA Games.”
In keeping with tradition, the SEA Games cauldron was then extinguished
and the SEA Games flag was lowered and handed over to Malaysia, who will host
the next edition in 2017.
About 50,000 spectators filed into the stadium for the two-and-a-half
hour ceremony that celebrated the performances of more than 4,000 athletes with
a video montage of some of the highlights and ended in an explosion of
fireworks, laser beams and a dance party hosted by DJ Ferry Corsten.
Just seven medals were decided on the last day with Thailand winning
two of them to finish at the top of the medals table with 95 golds.
The host-nation Singapore finished second with 84 golds, followed by
Vietnam (73), Malaysia (62), Indonesia (47), Philippines (29), Myanmar (12) and
Cambodia (1). Laos, Brunei and East Timor also won medals but none of the 402
golds that were handed out.
Singapore won the first gold medal on June 2, three days before the
Opening Ceremony, and also the last, just hours before the Closing Ceremony, in
the men's water polo, an event Singapore have won 26 times in a row, defeating
Indonesia 15-10 in the final match at the OCBC Aquatic Centre.
The republic also produced the two most prolific individual winners of
the Games, both teenage swimmers. Joseph Schooling, who turned 20 on Tuesday,
won gold medals in all nine events he entered while his 18-year-old team mate
Quah Zheng Wen won a total of 12 medals, including seven gold.
“Singapore has definitely punched above its weight in these,” the
team’s Chef de Mission Mr Nicholas Fang told a news conference.. “If you look
at population size, we are ranked ninth in Southeast Asia and yet we are able
to fight among the top three places, it says a lot about the performance of the
teams and the athletes and the sort of preparation that has been done.”
The Games also served as another dazzling demonstration of Singapore's
reputation as one of the world’s top sports destinations, with most of the
events held at the city’s state of the art SportsHub. Singapore already hosts a
Formula One race, the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) finals and a round of
swimming’s World Cup series and was awarded a place on the world rugby sevens
series.
"Team Singapore has put in fantastic efforts to make this a
successful SEA Games. They have inspired the entire nation repeatedly over the
past 18 days, what a great way to mark Singapore's jubilee," Dr Tan Eng
Liang and Mr Nicholas Fang said in a joint statement.
Source: SEA GAMES 2015
