Tolentino leads creation of SEA Plus Youth Games with Manila as inaugural host in 2028

PHILIPPINE Olympic Committee (POC) president Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino has spearheaded the creation in Southeast Asia of a youth-based multi-sport competition that will help guarantee the preparedness of the region’s athletes for the Asian Youth Games (AYG) and Youth Olympic Games (YOG).

To be called the Southeast Asian Plus Youth Games or SEA Plus YG, the competitions are designed to be held at least a year before the AYG for athletes aged 17 and under.

Tolentino is the founding president of the games that has already secured the imprimatur of nine of the 11 national Olympic committee (NOC) presidents of the SEA Games—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Timor Leste.

The POC head said that the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) has advanced its full support and assistance to the SEA Plus YG in a meeting among the founding members with OCA Director General Dr. Husain AHZ Al-Musallam of Kuwait who said that the countries which don’t want to join is up to them.”

“The SEA Plus YG is Southeast Asia’s answer to molding athletes at the grassroots level, make them competitive at the AYG level and able and capable of winning medals at the YOG,” Tolentino said.

The inaugural edition is intended to be in Manila in 2028 and shall be staged biennially thereafter to align with the AYG—the second largest sporting event in the continent after the Asian Games drawing 45 nations—which was recently hosted by Manama with Tashkent as the next host in 2029.

“Ultimately, the end goal is for these young athletes to have those strong foundations to contend at the Summer and Winter Olympics,” added Tolentino, who reiterated the immediate establishment of the SEA Plus YG during official meetings and caucuses at the 33rd SEA Games in Thailand last month.

Tolentino, honorary president of the SEA Games Federation Council, said the program shall consist of two mandatory sports, a maximum of 12 Olympic sports, maximum of five Asian non-Olympic sports and one traditional sport with up to six medal events.

The “Plus,” Tolentino explained, refers to at least one invited Asian NOC in other Asian sub-region for each edition of the Games for the purpose of providing added competition for the region’s grassroots.

The inaugural edition is intended to be in Manila in 2028 and shall be staged biennially thereafter to align with the AYG—the second largest sporting event in the continent after the Asian Games drawing 45 nations—which was recently hosted by Manama with Tashkent as the next host in 2029.

SEA Games countries remained behind the Asian powerhouse in the AYG and in the third edition in Bahrain last October, the Philippines won a record nine gold medals to be the second beat-ranked Southeast Asian nation behind Thailand with 15.

Thailand leads the region overall with 15 golds, followed by Singapore with 16, the Philippines with nine, Vietnam with six and Indonesia and Malaysia with five each.

“The SEA Plus YG is an elite-level, developmental and culturally unifying multi-sport event as we have stated in the games’ charter,” said Tolentino, who, according to the founding NOC heads “initiated, guide and established the creation of SEA Plus YG.”

Besides the SEA Plus YG, Tolentino has been fervently working on transitioning the SE Games into the ASEAN Games that aims to push a stronger ASEAN brand globally not only in sports but as essentially on the world economic and political stage.

POC Chief Bambol Tolentino