PRSI buoyed by up-and-coming swimmer's SEAG performance

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Although most of its young swimmers failed to land gold, the Indonesian Swimming Association (PRSI) believes their performance at the 2005 Southeast Asia (SEA) Games bodes well for future top finishes.

The country's swimmers won four gold medals in the Philippines, thanks to 17-year-old Magdalena Sutanto in the 800- meter women's freestyle, veteran Richard Sam Bera, 33, in the men's 100-meter freestyle, Donny B. Utomo, 26, in the men's 200- meter butterfly and the 4 x 100-meter medley relay quartet of Richard, brothers Felix C and Albert C. Sutanto and Henry Yudianto.

PRSI head of development affairs Lukman Niode said on Thursday most of the squad set new personal bests at the Nov. 27-Dec. 5 Games, and still showed room for improvement.

"Sixty-five percent of them exceeded their personal best, with some making excellent progress and others doing so-so."

Lukman named Magdalena, Harizal and Desak Nyoman Rina for outstanding performances.

Magdalena, who trains in the United States, slashed nine seconds off her old personal best with her gold-medal winning time of 8:59.13.

Harizal, 15, recorded a time of 1:00 in the men's 100 meters backstroke from 1:03 early this year.

"Those are sharp leaps within one year," said Lukman, himself a winner of 14 SEA Games golds in the 1970s and 1980s.

"But they are still growing. Once they have reached the elite level, they might not be able to make such a huge leap anymore."

Brian Howard, Sherly Yunita, Felicia Leksono and Felicia Tjandra were considered to have made average progress, while Margaretha Herawati and Shelomita produced satisfactory results.

Lukman said concrete results of the training programs for the young swimmers -- including stints in the United States and Australia -- would only be seen in the long term.

"In swimming, intensive training for young swimmers will produce great results after three to four years. If it's only a year of intensive training, it will be useless and will not produce anything."

He asked the media and public to keep their expectations realistic for the young swimmers, especially in 2006's Asian Games.

"Frankly speaking, we can't expect those young swimmers to win any medals let alone gold in the Asian Games. We are focusing on the 2007 SEA Games and the 2008 Olympic Games for them."