No great expectations
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.