Eight Asia-pacific countries join Jakarta X-rage c'ships
Eight Asia-pacific countries join Jakarta X-rage c'ships
Musthofid, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Eight Asia-Pacific countries are set to join the Phillips X-
Rage, an extreme sports competition that begins in Jakarta on
Friday.
The three-day competition will take place at the eastern
Senayan parking lot and feature 67 athletes from Singapore,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, China
and Indonesia.
The competition will be bolstered by the involvement of
professional extreme athletes from Japan and Australia, who will
present a skills demonstration.
Jakarta first hosted such an event last year, but it was then
restricted to local athletes.
"We are aiming at gathering them together so that they can
gauge their standard compared to other participants," Danny Chan,
from event organizer IMG, said about the new policy of bringing
the region's national champions into the finals.
"If they compete only inside the country, their playing
standard will be limited," he said after a press conference on
Wednesday.
The organizers, under the sponsorship of Netherlands-based
electronics company Phillips, are offering an American tour
package to the winners, who will be given a one-week trip to
Woodward Camp, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, a summer camp for
extreme sports lovers.
The Jakarta X-Rage championship will feature skateboard, BMX
bike and inline skating (roller blading) competitions, each
divided into junior and senior categories.
Fielding six athletes, host Indonesia will take part in only
two of the competitions. The six were winners at the national
championships in Surabaya, East Java, last October.
Indra Kubon, Adymas and Mario Palandeng will compete in the
skateboard competition, while Ardy Polii, Apep and Chandra
Purnamawan will join the BMX event.
"Good inline skaters are still scarce here. It's not popular
yet," Didi Arifin, tournament director from the Indonesian
Skateboarding Association, told The Jakarta Post.
Assessing the Indonesians' chances against their foreign
rivals, Didi said they were pinning their hopes on juniors Mario
and Chandra.
"There will be stiff competition in the senior skateboard
event with all the participating countries having almost equal
chances. But in the junior competition, we may have a bigger
chance in Mario," Didi.
In the BMX senior division, Didi predicted Taiwan would
dominate. "If Ardy Polii could just take a place in the top
three, it would be a spectacular achievement, but in the junior
division I believe Chandra Purnamawan could win it," he said.
The Bandung-based Chandra chalked up a career best
international performance when he won a gold and silver at the
2000 ESPN Asian X-games in Phuket, Thailand.