Asiad decision upsets archery, bowling bodies

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Archery Association and the Indonesian Bowling Association expressed disappointment yesterday at the National Sports Council's decision not to choose their sports to represent the country at the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok next December.

The archery association's secretary-general, Edo Rahantoknam, said the council should have given a reason why his organization's proposal was rejected.

"We haven't received any letter from the council saying that our proposal was rejected. We didn't know on what basis the council chose the 22 sports. They probably just considered our bad performance recently," he said.

The council announced Monday that it had chosen 22 sports in which Indonesia would compete at the Asiad. They are track and field, badminton, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrian, fencing, soccer, gymnastics, judo, karate, rowing, sepak takraw, shooting, swimming, tae kwon do, tennis, volleyball, weight lifting, wrestling, wushu and yachting.

The sports organizations will have to stage and finance their own, decentralized, training for about 10 months before the council takes over three months prior to the start of the Games.

Indonesian archers have performed poorly since reaching their peak at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul the women's trio of Nurfitriyana, Lilies Handayani and Kusumawardhani won the silver after beating the U.S. team in a playoff.

Indonesia only won one gold and three silvers in the 19th SEA Games here last October. The result was worse than the 1995 Games where national archers won two golds, one silver and two bronzes.

Indonesia made a clean sweep of all four golds in the 1993 Games in Singapore.

Edo said the association did not mention its target for the Asiad due to the limited skills of its young archers.

"They are being prepared for the association's eight-year training program. We can't push the young archers and expect them to win medals at the event unless we have a miracle," he said.

Edo said the council's rejection would likely influence the association's plan to contract South Korean Lee Jae-hyung, who is reputed to be the second best coach in his country, for at least one year.

"We plan to stage a centralized training, financed by the association, under Lee's supervision as preparation for the Asiad. But with the rejection, it seems the association has to change the plan," he said.

The association has planned to groom 10 male and 10 female archers for the Asiad.

Edo declined to speculate whether he thought the archers would still have a chance to compete in the Asiad, saying that the association will meet tomorrow to discuss its plan for next year.

The council said that if sports which were not chosen could show their athletes' form was good enough during the 10-month period, the council would reconsider their participation in the quadrennial event.

Bowling

The bowling association's secretary-general, Abdul Rauf, said that he was disappointed with the decision but that the association would continue with its training program.

"If we show good form during the 10-month period, I believe the council will consider our bowlers to compete at the event," he said.

"Our target at the Asiad was to win the silver as we did in the 1994 Games in Hiroshima," he added.

The association will select nine male and nine female bowlers by the end of this month for its long-term training program for the Asiad.

"Of the 18 athletes, about 70 percent of them are less than 35 years old," Abdul said.

Twelve bowlers, six male and six female, will be selected to compete in the Asian Championships in Taipei in July as a warmup for the Asiad.

Abdul said the association would finance the training and would also likely cooperate with the Cosmic bowling center in Pluit to provide free-of-charge practice facilities.

He also said the association would send Gatot Ario Nugroho and Lily Suhaimi to compete at the Brunswick Asia Bowling Championship in Guangzhou, China, from Dec. 9 to Dec. 12. (yan)