Government plans to expand Canidrome as sports venue

The government is planning to continue to use the facilities of the former Canidrome, included the Lin Fong Sports Center, as a sports venue, with plans to expand the facility in order to include other sports activities, the vice president of the Sports Bureau (ID), Allen Lau, told the media yesterday. “Regarding the future project[s] for the Canidrome, we have been informing and addressing the need to have more sports activities in the usage of such [a] facility,” Lau said, adding that for such an expansion, the ID is also collecting opinions from other government bureaus, namely from the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ).

“As for the design of the future facility, we do not know yet [for the time being], we are only collecting opinions,” Lau said. “The purposes of the space will be maintained, and in the future we will add other areas with different usages and different sports disciplines.”

For the time being, the vice president of the ID said that the population is invited to use the running track.

“We have more areas for sports practice now, namely a running track which is open from 6 a.m. untill 11 p.m. from Monday to Sunday, and [so far] we are registering around 80 people to use this facility [the running track alone] on a daily basis,” Lau said, also noting that the football pitch is well-used by the Macau Football Association, as well as for School Championships and practice for different football clubs and associations.

For the moment, the pitch is only being used two days per week (every Wednesday and Friday) but the ID says the bureau is studying the possibility of expanding this by one more day each week or opening it for daily use.

In order to add more sports venues to the public sports facilities network, Lau said the ID is continuing to seek collaborations with school institutions that will allow the use of their sports grounds in times they are not being used by the school to service the population, a task he said would not be easy, but has been achieving some results.