KONI to ax Asian Games athletes down to 100s

Musthofid, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With its message that only those with the best medal prospects will be going to the Asian Games, the National Sports Council (KONI) expects to trim even further the number of athletes now training for the Asian sporting festival.

As many as 152 athletes from 19 sports are at the moment in training and hoping to win a slot on the Indonesian team that will go to Busan, South Korea, for the Games, which will be held from Sept. 29 to Oct. 14.

There were 172 athletes at the start of the training camp in January. More cuts can be expected as soon as overseas tryouts are completed.

"We expect there will be around 130 (athletes) left by the end of this month and around 100 the following month," I Gusti Kompyang Manila, the deputy project manager, told reporters following a meeting between KONI and its affiliated sports organizations here on Friday.

Manila said decisions on whether athletes would be included on the Asian Games team would be made based on their performances at tryouts, their medical tests and their personalities.

"If they only finish in the top eight or six (in tryouts), then what's the point of keeping them on the team. They will certainly not be able to stand up to the competition at the Asian Games," he said.

Discussing the dismissal of Stevie Binalay from the boxing squad, Manila said the action was taken because KONI would not tolerate violations of the rules and regulations of the sports council.

Stevie was recently dismissed because he left the training grounds without notifying officials.

Cautious about being criticized for an inefficient campaign at the Asian Games, KONI, which has already been slammed for Indonesia's mediocre performance at the Southeast Asian Games, is enforcing a strict policy on the selection of athletes.

"If they appear to be in the top four in a tryout, we'll need to evaluate them further. If their performance is far below the kind of performance that is likely going to be necessary to finish third in the Asian Games, they will not go," Manila said.

Manila, a retired two-star Army general, denied reports in a local publication that four archers had been dumped from the training program because they failed to live up to standards.

The 12 archers taking part in the training just finished their tryout on Thursday, but Manila said that none of them had been cut from the squad yet, pending another two tryouts.

"Decisions by sports organizations over the fates of their athletes should first go through KONI. If (the archers had been cut), we would have already been notified," he said.