Indonesian sports suffering decline

Indonesian sports suffering decline

By Arif Suryobuwono

Can Indonesia defend its overall title at the 18th Southeast Asian Games in Chiang Mai, Thailand? Optimists may keep their fingers crossed. Pessimists may pour cold water on Indonesia's prospects - and be right. Today's sports climate in Indonesia is not conducive enough to raise the country's sports performance to a new height. The following article tries to put it under survey.

JAKARTA (JP): For the Dec. 9 to Dec. 17 Southeast Asian Games in Chiang Mai, it would be too late to put the following ad in the media:

Urgently needed: Full-time athletes to bring back the good-old-days of Indonesian sports (the 1950s and the 1960s).

Qualifications: age under fifteen, built for the sport they play, set to achieve world-class results, willingness to live on and for sports, loyal to the country.

Apply to the National Sports Council (KONI), Jl. Jenderal Sudirman Pintu I Senayan, Jakarta. No closing date.

Moreover, advertising for athletes might be unthinkable for KONI. At present, it would be able to pay for the ad, but not the athlete's salary.

This much was implicit in what KONI deputy chairman Arie Sudewo said at a two-day sports seminar in Cipayung, West Java, on Nov. 21.

At the seminar, Arie contrasted the golden era of the All- Indonesia Soccer Association (PSSI) with its recent poor showings and its ambition to represent Asia in the 2002 World Cup.

During the 1950s it was quite easy for PSSI to beat Hong Kong, home to the strongest Asian soccer clubs. It downed Hong Kong Combination 3-1, edged Hong Kong Selected 4-2 and routed Hong Kong All Chinese 5-0. PSSI also pipped defending champion India 3-0 at the 1954 Asian Games in Manila.

By contrast, last year PSSI was forced to pull out of the 12th Asian Games in Hiroshima, Japan, following poor performances at home competition. Last August PSSI lost the chance of making its only second Olympic appearance in Atlanta in 1996. It lost to South Korea in their Asia Oceania Zone qualifying match for the Summer Games.

Arie also recalled the golden days of Indonesian track and field. He mentioned former sprinter Mohammad Sarengat (now a KONI top official) whose 1962 Asian Games record in the men's 100m dash remained unbroken for ten years.

Unpopular

This means that except for badminton and a few other sports at which Indonesia excels internationally, Indonesian sports in general have been suffering a decline.

"Why?" Arie asked. "Because sports are no longer popular among the youth," he answered. Arie gave an example.

The 11th Asian Track and Field Championships, which were opened by President Soeharto on Sept. 20 in Jakarta, saw schoolchildren filling the Senayan Madya stadium.

But shortly after the president left, the stadium was almost empty although the competitions have not yet finished.

The schoolchildren were not interested in watching the track and field competition. They were there because they were required to be, Arie said. "So, can you expect them to take the sport seriously, let alone to be good at it?" Arie said.

Track and field may be unpopular. But popularity is not a guaranteed path to top performance.

For instance, the National Basketball Association (NBA) mania. It has indeed made basketball popular among schoolchildren.

But it does little to motivate them to play basketball for a career, according to Suharto, who heads the Ministry of Education and Culture's physical fitness office.

This was also confirmed by Mohammad Rifki, one of the cagers KONI is fielding to the 18th SEA Games.

"Many of my affluent juniors are obsessed by NBA heroes. Most of them play basketball to imitate their idols, for fun or to show off, of course, but rarely for performance," said the 26- year-old forward.

"I come from a poor family. As teenager I took basketball seriously because I saw it as a way to earn a living and support my parents," said Rifki, now a professional player with Jakarta's Aspac bank.

Talent scouting

Arie indicated that useless talent scouting is also to blame.

"During the (11th Asian track and field) championships, I saw many of our athletes who are not built for their sport," he said.

"On the other hand, I see many youths, tall with athletically built bodies as fashion models and in other entertainment jobs. Had they been active in sports ... ," said the retired army lieutenant general.

The problem here is that most of Indonesian athletes come from poor families. They become athletes because they - unskilled and uneducated for white-collar jobs - are often left with no other options.

Featherweight junior Akbar Maulana is an example. He stepped into the pro boxing ring without having amateur fighting experi ence at all. For the fight which caused his death 10 hours after being knocked out, he was paid only Rp 500,000 (US$224), quite a considerable sum for a poor man. And he still had to give 30 percent of the money to his manager.

Another example is Ni Made Wahyuni. This year's world champion of Indonesian martial art pencak silat and three-time SEA Games champion has ended up as a security guard in a hotel in Bali.

On the other hand, the entertainment industry, nursed by the country's impressive economic growths in the recent decades, has a great demand for youths with alluring bodies and faces.

And since it pays awfully good money, the picks of the country's youth often goes to the industry.

Inappropriate talent scouting is also a concern of a very senior official of the Indonesian Equestrian Association who requested anonymity. "I am dissatisfied with the team we are sending to the (18th) SEA Games. Our best riders are not in. But the power to make decision is not mine," said the international judge who has been with the association since its establishment in the 1970s.

He suggested that selection often relied on personal likes and dislikes, relationships or family connections rather than on actual performance.

Money

Arie said that luring youths to sports without providing strong financial bases for their future is "like dangling them between heaven and earth."

"We can't urge our youths to become athletes just for the sake of the nation's glory," Arie said, "Because, if they ask, 'what about my future? Is there anything I can get financially from becoming an athlete ?' we would not be able to answer."

Money is the answer. Hence, high-ranking government officials, supposed to have good connections with the business community, were appointed to head the sports organizations under KONI's coordination, Arie said.

In fact, however, not all officials are up to that task. "I, for example, am not," said Arie, who is a former head of the Armed Forces Intelligence Agency.

By contrast, KONI chairman Wismoyo Arismunandar is able to secure funds from the country's prominent business circle. For the 18th Southeast Asian Games in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for instance, the former Army Chief of Staff found Rp 18 billion (US$7.8 million).

But tycoons cannot always be relied on for money. Donation fatigue may occur. Political and economic changes may affect their business.

Therefore, "sports must be put up for sale," Arie said. He means sponsorship. But even when a sport finds money has been made available for its development, it is often not clear where the money goes.

For instance, some tennis players bound for the 18th SEA Games were reported to have stopped training because they did not receive their allowances in full.

"How can we expect world-class performance from our athletes if they are still beset with unnecessary problems like that?" asked noted sports observer Mangombar Ferdinand Siregar.

Siregar, another speaker of the two-day sports seminar in Cipayung, also criticized KONI for not being transparent when it comes to the use of the donations it receives.

But Togi Hutagaol, who is in charge of KONI's budget, told The Post that KONI employs an independent public accountant firm to audit its finances.

Togi, who was unable to name the firm, said KONI also gives reports on the use of the funds to donors. As for transparency, Togi said, "I don't think it's necessary to publicize the audit's results. They are just for internal use."

Management

Siregar, who used to be KONI secretary-general, indicated that matters were made worse by the poor management of most sports organization under KONI even though they are generally chaired by state ministers.

By "poor management" Siregar meant the inability of the chairpersons to carry out their organizations' programs as re quired and the redundancy of their programs.

"But how can they implement the programs if they know nothing about the sports they manage and have no time for the organizations?" Siregar asked.

Minister of Administrative Reforms T.B. Silalahi last month withdrew from the chairmanship of the Indonesian Wrestling Association. His reason, according to Hendro Sumaryo, the head of the association's Jakarta chapter, was "having no time for the organization."

This shows that KONI does nothing to ministers who fail to care its sports organizations. "Does KONI have the courage to control what the ministers do for the organizations and replace them if they are found unqualified?" Siregar asked.

But Siregar might be barking upon the wrong tree. KONI bylaws imply that it is the national congress of the respective sports organization which has the right to decide whether its chairman is competent or not. KONI may help or offer advise but is not supposed to interfere because these are the organization's internal affairs.

Moreover, "To chair KONI's sports organizations, a chairman need not always be present. Just a word from his mouth is enough," " Johanes Karsan, deputy chairman in charge of KONI organizational affairs, told the Post.

Siregar concluded that the problem lay with the management (both the system and the persons). "First of all, it is the man agement which needs to be tidied up," the noted critic said.

But the problem with the management is that they always say they are open to criticism yet feel upset when they get some, he added.

Fitness

But first of all, and the most basic of all, the thing which is in need of sorting out is the physical fitness of Indonesian youths.

Suharto showed to the Post 1993 research which indicated a general decline in physical fitness among four groups of schoolchildren of both gender, from those aged six to nine to those aged 16 to 17.

The research randomly sampled 1,588 schoolboys and 1,347 schoolgirls aged six to 17 throughout Indonesia from the 1993 population of around 41.3 million schoolchildren of those ages.

Parameters used to determine whether a child is very fit, fit, moderately fit, less fit or not fit were based on cardio- respiratory endurance, strength, flexibility, body composition (active tissue to fat deposit ratio) and muscle endurance.

The test results, presented in a nomogram, were alarming.

Only 2.2 percent of the 1,588 schoolboys sampled can be categorized as very fit. For the 1,347 schoolgirls sampled, the figure is 1.6 percent.

The sample may not be representative since it was only 0.007 percent of the entire population at that time. Suharto said that limited funds forced his office to restrict the sample.

Yet the findings seem to confirm the prevailing fitness condition common among today's Indonesian athletes.

Chinese gymnastics coach Yu Feng commented on the Indonesian SEA Games-bound gymnasts he trained in Guangzhou last month, "Their lack of energy is obvious, especially on the parallel bars."

But worse than that was the shift from little to null in the number of very fit schoolchildren as the age groups increases.

The research shows that only 5.03 percent of the 358 schoolboys and only 2.52 percent of the 318 schoolgirls aged six to nine were very fit.

But in the age group of 16 to 17 - the age of peak performance in most sports - none of the schoolchildren in either gender were found to be very fit.

Why? No survey on "the why" has so far been made, due to lack of funds. Suharto believed that the causes may be poor sports education, lack of sports teachers, lack of sports facilities, lack of good sports curricula and the low priority given to sports at school.

Given all these problems, can Indonesia defend its overall title at the 18th SEA Games? KONI would say yes, though for the Dec. 9 to Dec. 17 games, it will be too late for KONI to sort out these problems.

Odds may be with Indonesia. The other Southeast Asian oppon ents may be weaker or injured. Indonesia may keep the title.

But, what is the point of winning the biggest haul of gold medals and retaining our title if we win it because though our performance is poor, our opponents' is poorer still?