Cambodia Hopeful as Sport’s Greatest Spectacle Begins

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After a turbulent seven years of crisis-laden preparation, over 10,000 athletes from over 200 nations have converged on the South American nation of Brazil as the curtain comes down this evening at Rio de Janeiro’s famed Maracana Stadium for what is widely-regarded as sports’ greatest spectacle.
 

Cambodia has a delegation of 16 individuals, six of them athletes, who will each hope the many years of hard work, sweat and toil will be rewarded over the 17 days of sporting competition, in front of an estimated potential TV audience of almost 5 billion people the world over, against many of their disciplines’ greatest specialists.
 

Cambodia has a long and storied history at the Olympic Games, appearing in eight Games, after debuting at Melbourne 60 years ago in 1956. They have appeared in each of the last five. However, they are yet to seize a medal, a distinction they can share 75 other nations, more than 30 percent of those participating in Rio.
 

Five of Cambodia’s six Olympic athletes pose ahead of their departure for the Rio Games last week. KT / Yeun Punlue

 

Seavmey is Kingdom’s best hope
 

Sorn Seavmey, Cambodia’s taekwondo darling, is the Kingdom’s best hope of breaking that streak, although she will first need to find a way past the Netherland’s Reshimie Oogink in the opening round of the over 67kg women’s event.
 

While the 1.79m Oogink is not quite dwarfed by Seavmey’s 1.83m frame, at 26 years old, the Dutch woman will have the strength of experience firmly on her side.  
 

Ranked 75th in the world, she was a winner of a gold at the Grand Prix Final in Queretaro, Mexico in 2014 and bronzes in the Summer Universiade in Gwangju, South Korea last year. A fine technician and known for her jump spinning round kick, she has been described as a definite contender and one of the event’s ‘dark horses’.

 

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