The Pacific Mini Games officially starts on the evening of Friday, June 17th with the opening ceremony set to come alive at the Oleai Track & Field arena in Saipan, Northern Marianas.
The Pacific Mini Games will be hosting nine sports, Athletics, Badminton, Baseball, Beach Volleyball, Golf, Tennis, Triathlon, Va’a and Weightlifting. Saipan, Tinian and Rota will host the various competitions at different sporting venues. Papua New Guinea will be participating in five - Athletics, Golf, Tennis, Va’a and Weightlifting. Beach Volleyball and Triathlon were not endorsed due to non-compliance of set requirements. Baseball and Badminton National Federation opted not to participate in the Pacific Mini Games due to their teams’ readiness.
Sixteen countries will be participating in the sport at the American Memorial Park, Pacific Islands Club with 98 athletes participating.
Tennis and Baseball start their events tomorrow, June 16, a day ahead of the opening ceremony. Six athletes will represent PNG in Tennis.
Tennis has been on every Pacific Games and Pacific Mini Games sports program since 2001. As a compulsory sport in the main Pacific Games, Tennis normally attracts entries from around 15 of the 22 member countries.
The competition is set to be fierce with all eyes on the Northern Mariana Islands’ own Colin Sinclair, who dominated the competition at the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa. New Caledonia, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, and Tahiti have all won gold medals since 2001.
In weightlifting at present, the strongest Weightlifting nations are Samoa and Papua New Guinea, while Fiji and Micronesia’s own Nauru and Kiribati are regular winners as well. Five weightlifters will be representing PNG. They will be among 131 weightlifters representing 15 countries. The event will be staged at the Marianas High School Gymnasium.
The Pacific Games Weightlifting competitions are very often a launching pad for the best lifters into the Olympic Games and World Championships.
Athletics draws the greatest number of countries entering compared to any sport in the Pacific Games. Eighteen countries are taking part. The competition is set to run from June 21-25. Three hundred and twenty nine (329) athletes will take to the track and field events at Oleai Sports complex Track & Field.
PNG will be hosting a big team in Athletics with 39 athletes, all participating in both track and field events.
Athletics has been a staple of every Pacific Games and Pacific Mini Games sports program since the inception of the Games. It is one of the Olympic Games, two universality sports (Swimming being the other) where every country is offered an opportunity to participate.
Typically, the medals are shared evenly between several countries with Fiji and PNG, particularly strong in the sprints, Polynesian powerhouses Samoa, Tahiti, and Tonga particularly strong in the field events, and New Caledonia strong right across.
With Va’a (Outrigger Canoeing), Tahiti is the spiritual home of Va’a, the only true indigenous sport on the Pacific Games program. PNG has 34 athletes participating in Va’a, among 182 athletes from 11 countries.
At the Pacific Games of 2015 and 2019, Cook Islands, New Caledonia and PNG have all tasted gold medal success but Tahiti continues to win the vast majority of events. Va’a is scheduled to start on June 20.
In Golf, PNG fields three players among 61 athletes with competition set for June 21 at Coral Ocean Resort Golf Course. Golf has been a sport on the Pacific Mini Games program seven times in the past.
