KONI to hone best PON athletes for SEA Games
JAKARTA (JP): The National Sports Council (KONI) has set the 2000 National Games (PON) as the arena to recruit athletes for centralized training in its strategy to regain the overall medal title at the 2001 Southeast Asian Games.
The council's chief of athletes development, Mochammad Hindarto, said on Thursday that it was following its example in 1997, when sports organizations recruited PON winners for the Games.
"After PON, sports organizations can recruit 200 athletes to be prepared for the SEA Games. With nearly 18 months to prepare the athletes, I believe we can groom them maximally in order heal our wounds from only finishing third in the 1999 Games," he said.
Indonesia's unexpectedly poor showing was its worst since first competing in the Games 22 years ago. It won only 44 golds, compared to the 65 golds of Thailand and 57 of Malaysia, previously the perennial third-place finisher.
Indonesia bagged 147 golds and Thailand took 77 in 1997.
"After the 1996 PON, sports organizations and KONI recruited the athletes to be groomed for the 1997 Games for about nine months. The results were really satisfactory," said Hindarto, the chef de mission in the 1999 Games.
"This year we only had three months to prepare the athletes for the Games."
Hindarto said funding constraints remained the major obstacle to organizing long-term training for the country's athletes.
"It's really a disparity for us compared to Malaysia, which is spending nearly US$28.2 million to support the Malaysia Gemilang (Malaysia Shines) project to win the 2001 Games title before its own public.
"The Malaysian government has even prepared the budget to support the Malaysia Boleh (Malaysia Can) project to fulfill its ambition to host the 2006 Asian Games and improve its ranking in the quadrennial event."
According to the former Jakarta Police chief, the Malaysia government sought the sponsorship of major companies.
"KONI has gathered businesspeople to become patrons of sports organizations, especially by providing the budget for athletes development programs. However, many of them never even handed over assistance."
Commenting on sports observer Benny Mailili's suggestion that the government should support sports development by providing funds through the National Development and Planning Board (Bappenas) directly to sports organizations, Hindarto said it would be better if Bappenas funneled the budget to both sports organizations and KONI.
"As far as I know, in other countries the governments always distribute the funds for athlete development programs through their national Olympics committees, including in Thailand.
"However, KONI won't mind if Bappenas distributes the money directly to sports organizations as long as they manage to show achievements in international events. In receiving the funding, they must be able to stage continuous long-term training.
"Whenever Indonesia must compete in international championships, sports organizations would only need to appoint the athletes without any need to stage centralized training."
Hindarto said the council's funds of Rp 5.5 billion ($723,700) from Bappenas and another Rp 4.5 billion from the Gelora Senayan Management Board was only sufficient to pay to send the contingent to the Games.
"The money was only enough to send the contingent and to provide allowances for athletes and officials. We prepared the contingent on a budget-oriented basis and all the calculations were based on the athletes' needs." (yan)