KONI wants to top 2003 medal tally

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The National Sports Council (KONI) expects its 2005 Southeast Asia (SEA) Games team to exceed its medal haul from the last regional competition after successfully lobbying for an additional 53 events.

"I'm sure that we could reach more than 210 medals, which was the total of our medal collection in the last SEA Games," KONI head of development Djoko Pramono told a news conference on Tuesday.

"But we couldn't speculate about winning the SEA Games, because we have difficulty in beating Thailand and Vietnam at present."

Djoko thanked the KONI delegation to the Southeast Asia Games Federation meeting in Manila from April 28-30 for securing the additional events for the 23rd Games, to be held in December in the Philippine capital.

The delegation was led by KONI secretary-general Djohar Arifin Husin, accompanied by senior officials including Indra Kartasasmita and Sri Sudono Sumarto.

Among the additional events are men's and women's badminton team competitions, men's and women's tennis teams, light flyweight and light middleweight in bodybuilding, blitz chess men's and women's singles, the over 100 kilograms class in the men's division of judo and over 78 kilograms in the women's.

"About 85 percent of our proposal was accepted in the meeting," Djoko said.

"Now we can predict that we will be able to beat the Philippines although it will send some 300 athletes to China for six months to train."

Indonesia, which dominated the SEA Games in the 1980s and early 1990s, finished third in the medal standings for the 2003 SEA Games, behind champion Vietnam and Thailand.

Meanwhile, Djohar hoped that Indonesian athletes would be more motivated to win gold because of the additional events.

"We are pleased with the addition of the events because in the last SEAG Federation meeting, it was decided that the SEA Games would only feature events which were listed for the Olympic Games," he said.

"Events like men's and women's badminton teams, men's and women's tennis teams will finally be competed in the 2005 SEA Games, which is good news for Indonesia."