LABUAN: Labuan, which is an old hand at holding international events, is prepared to host the nine-day, 5th Borneo Games, beginning Sept 13.
About RM2 million in allocation have been set aside for the event, with 1,098 participants from three countries taking part in 12 sporting games.
The countries are Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
Chef De Mission Datuk Mohd Nadzri Osman, who is also Labuan Corporation (LC) chief executive officer, said the island was now in the midst of preparations, with inspections being carried out on sporting facilities and infrastructures.
“The allocation will be fully utilised to carry out inspection and upgrading facilities and infrastructures to cater to the needs of the international games,” he said at a press conference here today.
According to him, the 12 sporting events comprise lawn bowl, track and field, karate, archery, tug-of-war, gasing, basketball, aquatics, sepak takraw, silat, football and futsal.
There will also be a golf tournament for the VVIPs.
After Sabah which has 240 athletes participating the games, Labuan has the second highest number of athletes at 236, followed by Sarawak (140), Brunei (224), East Kalimantan (160), South Kalimantan (46) and West Kalimantan with 45 athletes.
The previous games were held in Samarinda, East Kalimantan in 2011 and the host took the overall title.
Labuan’s previous achievement was at seventh place with 16 medals – one gold through yachting sport, five silver (track and field) and 10 bronze in yachting sport.
Meanwhile, Sabah Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Tawfiq Abu Bakar Titingan said the main objective of the Sabah Games was to unearth talents from the grassroots level to gauge how athletes who excelled during the recent games fared against athletes from the rest of Borneo island.