Cambodia Going To The Olympics

.Cambodia will send a 15-member delegation to participate in the Olympic Games in Beijing in August with eye on swimming and marathon medals, English-Khmer language newspaper the Cambodian Daily said Friday.

The team will include Thong Khon, tourism minister and president of the National Olympic Committee of Cambodia (NOCC), and depart for Beijing on August 7, the paper quoted Nhan Sok Visal, an NOCC administrator, as saying. King Norodom Sihamoni and Education Minister Kol Pheng also plan to attend the opening ceremony of the games, he added. Among the delegation members are 23-year-old Hem Bunting and 19-year-old female Sou Titlinda for marathon, and 18-year-old Hem Thon Ponloeu and his 16-year-old niece Hem Thon Vitiny for 50-meter free style swimming race, he said.

Hem Bunting won silver and bronze medals in track and field at the SEA Games in Thailand in December, he added. It is not the first time Cambodia has sent athletes to the Olympics. The first post-war delegation of five Khmers competed at the Atlanta Games in 1996, and Cambodia subsequently sent four athletes to both Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004. Source