No great expectations

Bruce Emond, Jakarta

The sports year is scheduled to get off to a blazing start in January when the A1 motor racing competition stops by Sentul, Bogor.

Hopefully, it will go off with a roar and not a sputter: There have been questions about the preparedness of the circuit to host the championships -- a rival to F1 featuring 24 teams representing different nations -- on Jan. 15.

The push is on to get the circuit ready in time, with local rider Ananda Mikola set to take his place on the grid.

Indonesia's old dependable is badminton, the sport where the country's athletes can be counted on to uphold national pride on the world stage. Singles player Taufik Hidayat and mixed doubles pair Lilyana Natsir and Nova Widianto will defend their world crowns in September in Madrid, while the national men's and women's teams compete in the Thomas and Uber Cups in Sendai, Japan, in April.

But the rest of 2006, if this past year is any indication, looks bleak for national sports. The year 2005 was a troubled one, the euphoria from the passage of the long-awaited law on sports quashed by the country's disastrous showing in the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the Philippines in December.

Indonesia, the champion in the overall medal standings nine times since it made its debut in the regional multisport event in 1977, stumbled to a fifth place finish -- its worst ever -- in the 11-nation Games. No longer was the country simply second best to powerhouse Thailand, but now it was a decided also-ran.

Of course, the blame game began as soon as it became clear Indonesia was headed for disaster, with a host of reasons offered for the failure.

From budget deficiencies to poor coaching and inefficient talent scouting -- the excuses all sound familiar to anybody who has been around the national sports scene in recent years, beginning with the early warning sign of the country's third- place finish at the SEA Games in 1999.

It's also clear that Indonesia's reversal of fortunes in the sports arena did not happen overnight; some have put it down to inertia, complacency and a lack of thorough planning over the years when Indonesia did rule the region.

Similarly, the process of picking up the pieces, of turning national sports around from an also-ran in the region to a force to be reckoned with, will not happen in a matter of months.

The National Sports Council (KONI) has made a start with the Indonesia Awakens elite training program for 11 sports in the runup to next year's Asian Games and the 2008 Olympics.

Athletes from two of the designated sports, cycling and karate, were outstanding at the SEA Games, and KONI has promised to expand the program to other sports.

Another issue to tackle is national coaching, with coaches lagging behind their peers in the region for knowledge and expertise and with no standardized coaching system nationwide.

SEA Games chef de mission and KONI deputy chairman Djoko Pramono said some coaches -- many of them former athletes who were forced to put their sports careers before education in their youth -- found it difficult to improve their skills, particularly with poor English comprehension and little technological savvy in the Internet era.

There was an encouraging sign in the middle of the year when the Indonesian Badminton Association (PBSI) moved to set up special coaching instruction program after many of its coaches failed a regional accreditation test.

Vision Asia -- the project of the Asian Football Confederation for more professionally run soccer within the region -- will make its debut in the country next year with pilot projects in Bandung and Yogyakarta. It will be a tough task to confront the entrenched old boys' network and infighting that has characterized Indonesian soccer for many years, and effect more than cosmetic changes.

Next year will also be the first for the sports law to be implemented after it was passed by the House in September.

Consisting of 24 chapters with 92 articles, and covering sports institutions, funding, sports management, the government's and public's share of responsibility in sports activities as well as doping and its punishment, the law should be used as the stimulus for change.

However, a presidential instruction is required to flesh out the details of the reward system, and the office of the sports ministry conducted a familiarization tour to introduce the law in major cities in December.

For badminton great Susy Susanti, it is simply a promising start, with the government needing to step up to bat with concrete measures.

"Don't make promises, give us the proof," the 1992 Olympic women's singles gold medalist, four-time All England winner and 1993 world champion told The Jakarta Post in August.

She noted that many bills passed into law were worth nothing more than the paper they were printed on amid a lack of implementation.

"If there is no implementation, then what is the law meant for? I wouldn't allow my children to become athletes," said the 34-year-old mother of two.

This year provided some hard and sobering lessons for Indonesian sports. By the time the Asian Games start in Doha next December, let's hope national sports -- having learned its lesson and working with vision and planning -- will be on the road to recovery from all that ails it.

The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.