Saudi Arabia will host the Asian Winter Games in 2029, the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) has announced.
Trojena in Neom region, north west Saudi Arabia, was awarded the hosting rights after a detailed presentation to the 41st OCA General Assembly in Cambodia on Tuesday.
It will be the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Winter Games, which began in 1986 and have been organised by Japan on four occasions, China twice and South Korea and Kazakhstan once each, OCA said in a statement.
“The General Assembly made some very important decisions, and it is a pleasant surprise that Saudi Arabia will be the host of the next Asian Winter Games in 2029,” said the OCA Acting President, Raja Randhir Singh, in summing up the meeting.
The President of the Saudi Olympic and Paralympic Committee, HRH Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al-Faisal, said: “This is a great victory for the Saudi nation and the people of the Gulf countries due to the generous support offered to the Saudi sports sector.
“This achievement also shed light on the enormous potential and the outstanding infrastructure of Saudi Arabia to host and organise international-level sports competitions and Games successfully.”
HH Prince Fahad bin Jalawi, SOPC Vice President, added that Trojena 2029 illustrated the keen interest of the Saudi leadership in the sports movement in the Kingdom.
“We are sparing no effort to push Saudi sports forward alongside the most advanced countries in the world,” he said.
The Asian Winter Games 2029 joined two more multi-sport events on the OCA calendar to be hosted by Saudi Arabia: The Asian Games in Riyadh in 2034 and the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2025, also in Riyadh, the OCA statement added.
The General Assembly was attended by almost 400 delegates from the Asian and international Olympic sports movement and heard presentations from the next four host cities of the Asian Games, as well as the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games to be held in Thailand in November 2023.
The chairs of 16 OCA committees gave their annual reports, as did the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Solidarity funding arm and the Association of National Olympic Committees.
The General Assembly approved the proposals put forward by the OCA Executive Board the previous day, including the establishment of a regional education office in Riyadh and an investment and marketing sub-office in Singapore.
The Asian Games future strategy was also discussed as the OCA looks to control the size and scale of its showpiece event.
The Deputy Secretary General of Kuwait Olympic Committee, Ali Al-Marri, put forward three proposals that were approved by the General Assembly: that Kuwait be allowed to host the next OCA General Assembly in 2023; that Kuwait desires to remain the home of the OCA “forever” after being located there since 1981; and that the Secretary General of the KOC, OCA Director General and FINA President, Husain Al-Musallam, be nominated as the next President of the OCA if the current President, Shaikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah, is not cleared of charges in the Swiss court in November.
Referring to Al Musallam, Deputy Secretary General Al-Marri said: “He is one of the people who built OCA, step by step, brick by brick.”
