The National Olympic Committee of Cambodia held a preliminary meeting with representatives from 25 affiliated federations at its headquarters yesterday to discuss the Kingdom’s participation in next June’s SEA Games in Singapore.

The near two-hour meeting touched on a range of issues including protocol, registration deadlines, travel documentation, pre-game training and finalisation of teams.

The Singapore Games involve 36 disciplines, and over 1,400 events will be staged from June 5 to 20.

“The main purpose of this initial consultation with the federations is to help them with pre-games preparations and to appraise them of some important procedural requirements,” NOCC secretary-general Vath Chamroeun said.

“We want all these federations to carefully go through the Games Technical Handbook so that they are familiar with venues, event deadlines, transportation, food arrangements and accomadation,” Vath Chamroeun said.

“The size of the Cambodian contingent is yet to be finalised, also the number of disciplines we enter. A rough estimate is around 300 athletes and officials. But the final number will be decided by the Ministry of Education,” the NOCC secretary-general said.

During the meeting, the NOCC appealed to the federations to keep their training programs going despite the fact some of them had not received financial support from the government this month.

“This vacuum was because the budgetary planning for this year ended after the Incheon Asian Games. There will be fresh funding next year, but we wanted the federations to cope with this gap” he said.

Meanwhile, the federations have been asked to prepare a list of probables and to ensure that those who are in the list have valid travel documents.

The NOCC is also pursuing a vigorous pregames dope testing campaign following the Incheon Games setback when a female soft tennis player tested positive for a banned substance that was in the weight-loss medication she had taken before leaving Cambodia.