Athletic officials pushed upgrade skills

Athletic officials pushed upgrade skills

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is
seeking to spur the athletics development in southeast Asia
through a seminar on administrative skills, which began here on
Friday.

The four-day seminar on the basic administration and athletics
organization is being hosted by the Regional Development Center
(RDC) Jakarta.

Fourteen countries, including those from the south Asian
region, participated in the seminar at the Century Hotel.

The participating countries are Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam,
Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar,
Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

"We are trying to instill more administrative skills for the
officials of the athletics federations in the region as well as
equip them with proper and clear knowledge about the management
of the organization," Kata Farkas, IAAF's Member Services
Officer, told The Jakarta Post after the official opening of the
seminar.

Farkas, who was a keynote speaker along with Maurice Nicholas,
her compatriot from the Asian Athletics Association (AAA), said
that she was very optimistic about the prospects of track and
field development in the region.

She called on the RDC to further step up its development
efforts in the organization of recommendable coaching clinics.

"Theoretically, if the RDC can organize a good coaching
education, logically and obviously the athletic performance will
subsequently be pushed to a higher level," she said.

RDC Jakarta supervises 19 countries, leaving Afghanistan,
India, Laos, Pakistan, Vietnam as the only absentees from the
seminar.

Indonesia has four participants in the seminar, including
Tigor Tanjung, the secretary-general of the Indonesian Athletics
Association (PASI).

RDC Jakarta Director Ria Lumintuarso pointed out the need to
improve the ability in managing the organization for the benefit
of the athletics development in their respective countries.

"Hopefully, the participants can make the best of their
presence and apply their upgraded knowledge when they arrive back
home," he said.

Farkas, whose main task is to supervise all nine RDCs in the
world, said that IAAF had allocated US$9 million annually for
development.

The money is spent in organizing competitions, sport-specific
seminars of its own and in the promotional campaign of the sport
through RDCs.

The seminar is the third clinic RDC Jakarta has hosted in four
months. The last two meetings were on physiotherapy and the
steeplechase respectively.