Biggest-ever Asian Games ready for liftoff in China after COVID delay

HANGZHOU: The biggest Asian Games in history, boasting about 12,000 competitors — more than the Olympics — will open on Saturday in the Chinese city of Hangzhou after a year’s delay because of COVID.

Athletes including world and Olympic champions will fight for medals in 40 sports from athletics, swimming and football to eSports and bridge.

Nine sports, among them boxing, break dancing and tennis, will serve as qualifiers for next year’s Paris Olympics.

The Games were supposed to take place last September but were postponed because of China’s strict zero-COVID rules, before China’s ruling Communist Party abruptly abandoned the policy.

The 19th edition of the Games, which were first held in New Delhi in 1951, throws together competitors from 45 countries and territories across Asia and the Middle East.

For China, which hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics in a COVID-secure “bubble” in Beijing, it is a chance to show off its organizational, sporting and technological prowess after the pandemic years cut the country off from the sporting world.

“We have overcome a lot of challenges but we are now fully conditioned to hold a successful Games,” Chen Weiqiang, chief spokesperson for the Games, said on Wednesday.

The Games will be staged at 54 venues — 14 newly constructed — mostly in Hangzhou but also extending to cities as far afield as Wenzhou, 300 kilometers (180 miles) south.

The centerpiece is the “Big Lotus” Olympic stadium with a capacity of up to 80,000 where athletics and the opening and closing ceremonies will be staged.

President Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony and meet Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad there, along with other visiting leaders, Chinese state media says.

Assad is making his first