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.