Archery organization to standardize training

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Archery Association (Perpani) will stage a 10-day coaching course in the Ragunan sports school complex, South Jakarta, starting on Tuesday.

The Perpani secretary-general, Udi Harsono, said on Thursday that the course was aimed at implementing across the board a coaching method developed by South Korean coach Lee Jae-hyung and his assistant Daniel Lumalesil.

"Lee will brief the coaches on the new method. He is expected to share his experience. We think that Lee's method will fit our desires," he said after a meeting with Perpani's officials at his office.

Udi said 30 coaches from Perpani's provincial chapters had confirmed their participation in the course. "We expect about 40 coaches to join the course."

Lee is fresh from training women's archer Hamdiah for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Hamdiah was stopped in the individual 1/32 eliminations, thus she failed to repeat Indonesian women's team success to win the only silver medal in 1988 Seoul Games.

Udi defended Lee's performance despite criticism of his training method after the failure at the Olympics.

"Lee does not fail at anything. Our poor results in the Olympics stemmed from the association's inconsistent training program. We didn't have enough money at that time so their was a break of several months in the training. We also failed to send athletes for overseas tournaments due to financial restraints."

However, Udi said Perpani would still consider extending Lee's training contract. Lee was hired in 1997 and his contract ends this month.

"We don't yet know about extending it. We are facing financial restraints."

Speaking about preparations for the 2001 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Kuala Lumpur, Lee said he had called eight male and eight female archers to join the decentralized training program in their respective provinces. (ivy)