Daily Times

JAKARTA: The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) will continue the tradition of the Asian Games Most Valuable Player award for the 18th Asiad in Jakarta and Palembang. OCA President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah has appointed Raja Randhir Singh, Honorary Life Vice President of the OCA, as Chairman of the MVP Award Committee. The Asian Games MVP was introduced at Bangkok 1998 and Jakarta-Palembang will be the sixth consecutive award. The committee will meet on Thursday (tomorrow), August 30, to discuss the leading candidates for the award, and the trophy will be awarded to the MVP at a ceremony in the Main Press Centre in Jakarta at 12 noon on Sunday (September 2) – the day of the closing ceremony.

Under the chairmanship of Raja Randhir Singh, the awards committee consists of Mr Charles Lo, OCA Media Committee Chairman; Mr Celso Dayrit, President of the Asian Fencing Federation; Mr Francis Wanadi, Deputy II of the Indonesian Asian Games Organising Committee (INASGOC); Mr Jeremy Walker, Editor of the OCA magazine Sporting Asia; and Mr Vinod Kumar Tiwari, OCA Director of International and NOC Relations, as Coordinator. The winner will receive the OCA MVP Trophy and $50,000 in prize money.

Previous winners of the Asian Games MVP award are:

Bangkok 1998: Koji Ito (Japan, athletics)

Busan 2002: Kosuke Kitajima (Japan, swimming)

Doha 2006: Park Tae-hwan (Republic of Korea, swimming)

Guangzhou 2010: Lin Dan (China, badminton)

Incheon 2014: Kosuke Hagino (Japan, swimming).

Published in Daily Times, August 29^th 2018.