Championships to yield 114 Taekwon doins for TI
JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Taekwondo Association (TI) will admit 114 of 273 Taekwon Doins competing in the first LG Cup National Championships to qualify for the 2000 National Games (PON) in Surabaya in July 2000.
TI chairman Suharto said on Monday that the championships would feature 16 classes of men's and women's finweight, flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight, middleweight and heavyweight.
"Two wild cards will be given to Juana Wangsa Putri, who has qualified for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, and Satrio Rahardani, the 1998 Asian Games silver medalist," he said.
The championships are mainly sponsored by PT LG Elektronik Indonesia. The company's president director, Kim In-ki, has committed to financially supporting the championships for five years.
The championships, which are free of charge, will begin on Nov. 28 through to Nov. 30 at the Senayan Indoor Stadium and will be competed by 167 men's and 106 women's Taekwon Doins.
Suharto said due to the support TI would stage a quarterly circuit outside Java to seek potential future talent.
TI has set competition programs at the Southeast Asian Taekwondo Championships to be held in Jakarta in November 2000.
"Indonesia was appointed to host the event in 1998, but due to the monetary crisis and the withdrawal of five countries from the event, we decided to delay the championships and stage them next year when the situation has improved," Suharto said.
Indonesian competitors in the championships will be taken from the winners and runners-up in the national championships this year, with bronze medalists as substitutes.
South Korean coach Oh Il-nam said Juana might not be able to compete in PON because she had to compete at the Korea Open in June.
Juana was training in Korea before competing at the U.S. Open in Honolulu, Hawaii, from Feb. 2 to Feb. 6; the Dutch Open in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, from March 10 to March 12; the Belgium Open in Brussels on April 1 and April 2; and the Korean Open in June. TI will need US$90,000 to finance the tour.
Oh said he expected Juana and Satrio, who also train in Korea, to be able to cope with the winter months when the temperature in the training center in Sang-nim province would reach minus 20 degrees Celsius.
Kim said LG would give special attention to Indonesian Taekwon Doins who could win medals at world-class events.
"We'll negotiate with TI to formulate the kind of attention we can provide to the athletes," he said.
Kim said LG wanted to financially support TI because tae kwon do was a South Korean martial arts which was very popular in Indonesia.
In Semarang, coach Singgih Endarto said the province would send 16 athletes, including 1999 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games team members Derry Dermansyah, Desi Nurhayati, Yoga Perdana, Veronika and Henky Prasetyo.
Singgih hoped his athletes would improve their achievements next year.
"They usually finish third after West Java and Jakarta, but we are optimistic that we can take over the leading positions from them," he said. (yan)