China, Korea miss Indonesia Open
JAKARTA (JP): China and South Korea will definitely skip the Sanyo Indonesia Open badminton championships in Denpasar, Bali, next month after both countries failed to register their athletes before the deadline on Aug. 16.
The Badminton Association of Indonesia (PBSI) secretary general, Leo Chandra Wiranata, said on Friday that PBSI could not force both countries to send their athletes.
"It's an open tournament. How can we force them to come?" he said.
This is the third year China has skipped the tournament. In the 1997 championships in Surakarta, Central Java, China failed to compete due to visa problems while a year later, it also opted to skip the tournament due to the crucial security problems in the capital.
South Korea did not come either last year with the same reason. This year it requested facilities for accommodation for its athletes which could not be fulfilled by PBSI.
"The International Badminton Federation (IBF) has urged us to register all contestants names. If we send the name lists later than the deadline, IBF will consider us as incapable of doing the job," Leo said.
"If China and Korea want to register later, both countries' associations must officially request to the IBF whether they can compete in the tournament or not."
Denmark will field a full team in the US$150,000 four-star tournament which takes place from Sept. 1 to Sept. 5. Among its players are the 1999 All England champion Peter Gade Christensen, the 1996 Olympic gold medalist Poul-Erik Hoyer-Larsen and the 1999 World Champion Camilla Martin.
Malaysia will also send a full team of, among others, Wong Choon Hann, Roslin Hashim and Rashid Sidek while Sweden will also send a full team, including Tomas Johansson and Daniel Eriksson in the singles and Par-Gunnar Jonsson and Peter Axelsson in the doubles.
Host Indonesia will field a full team comprising, among others, Hendrawan, Budi Santoso, Taufik Hidayat, Cindana Hartono, men's doubles of Candra Wijaya and Tony Gunawan, Ricky Subagja and Rexy Mainaky.
After the championships, Indonesia and Malaysia will field some of their players for a duel meet in Yogyakarta on Sept. 7.
Indonesia will field Budi and Taufik in the singles and Ricky and Antonius in the doubles while Malaysia will field Wong Choon Hann and either Sidek or Hashim in the singles and Jeremy Gan and Chan Choong Min in the doubles. The winning team will take home $4,000 and the losing team will get $2,000.
Indonesia will only send a small team to compete in the Konica Cup Singapore Open from Aug. 25 to Aug. 29. The team consists of Hendrawan, Budi, Taufik, Hariyanto Arbi, Marlev Mainaky in the men's singles, Yuli Marfuah in the women's singles, Candra and Tony, Ricky and Rexy, and Endra Mulyajaya and Hadi Saputra in the men's doubles. In the women's doubles, Elysa Nathanael and Deyana Lomban and another pair of Indarti Issolina and Carmelita will also take part. (yan)