KONI picks 82 athletes for Guangdong training

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The National Sports Council (KONI) will send 82 athletes from six sports to train in Guangdong, China, beginning this month to improve their gold medal-winning chances at the 2005 Southeast Asia (SEA) Games.

"We chose Guangdong because the province is known as the 'source' of champions in China," KONI chairman Agum Gumelar told a news conference on Tuesday.

The sports are table tennis, with 10 athletes, wrestling (12), archery (12), wushu (13), fencing (22) and shooting (13).

Athletes will be accompanied by 18 national coaches, four foreign coaches and six managers.

Agum said the athletes would also compete in select events under the guidance of Tian Xinde, deputy director general of the Guangdong Sport Bureau.

Tian, who also attended the news conference, said the athletes would be able to realize their dreams of gold medals at the SEA Games in Manila in November if they committed themselves to their training programs.

Qatar and Vietnam have also sent their athletes for training stints in the province neighboring Hong Kong. The thriving capital of the province, Guangzhou, is home to a state-of-the-art Olympic stadium, encompassing nearly one million square meters, that hosted the 2001 National Games.

The athletes will leave on a staggered schedule. Table tennis was scheduled to train from June 15 to Nov. 24, but KONI secretary-general Johar Arifin said the Table Tennis Association of Indonesia (PTMSI) requested an earlier June 9 departure.

Wrestlers will train from July 1-Aug. 31, wushu athletes from Sept. 1-Nov. 24, while archers, fencers and shooters are set for a concurrent Aug. 1-Nov. 24 training period.

Johar said Tian would take the athletes' data to Guangdong for use in assigning them to training programs.

The 2005 SEA Games is scheduled to be held from Nov. 27 to Dec. 5.