KONI plans tight scrutiny of Games hopefuls

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The National Sports Council (KONI) has decided to be more selective when forming its team for the 2005 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, saying it will send athletes only with the best prospects of winning medals.

The biennial 23rd SEA Games will be hosted by the Philippines next year.

Secretary general Djohar Arifin told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday the policy would make the training program more efficient and cost-effective.

Djohar said athletes' eligibility would be assessed based on an evaluation that would be carried out a month before the start of the event. The SEA Games is scheduled to start in December 2005.

Some of the Games hopefuls are already carrying out their training under the Indonesia Awakens (IA) program. The program grooms around 80 athletes in 11 sports with the final aim of boosting Indonesia's performance in the 2006 Asian Games in Qatar.

However, a more focused training program will be started nine months ahead of the SEA Games.

"KONI will form a team to observe and evaluate the athletes' performance at the end of the program before deciding whether they deserve places," Djohar said.

He said for measurable sports such as track and field or swimming, eligibility would involve a comparison of Indonesian results with those from athletes in other South East Asian athletes.

"If our athletes are still below them, then what's the use in sending them to the event?" Djohar said.

For immeasurable sports such as badminton, basketball or volleyball, the teams would be sent on their international performance record.

"It won't be like last year (the 22nd SEA Games in Vietnam) when athletes could feel secure about their places once they were summoned to join the training program," Djohar said.

With a total of 597 athletes, Indonesia could only take third place behind Vietnam and Thailand in the last year's medal total with 55 golds, 68 silvers and 98 bronzes.

Soccer and basketball teams brought no medals home from Vietnam and the two sports could be excluded from next year's squad.

Critics said the total of 221 medals brought home was unimpressive and said KONI had sent too many athletes.

"We still don't know yet how many athletes we will send -- perhaps about 450 athletes. And we expect them to bring home more medals since they will be better prepared than last year," Djohar said.

He said with the IA program some athletes would have already been training for 18 months by the time the Games kicked off.

Djohar said that so far KONI had not decided which sports Indonesian athletes would join because it was waiting for data from its development affairs section.

"But we have decided that we won't take part in sports such as arnis, petanque, muay thai, lawn bowls and also dance sports," Djohar said.