KONI picks 82 athletes for Guangdong training

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.