RI wall climbers hope for top tenth spot at Asiad

JAKARTA (JP): Five Indonesian wall climbers will fly for Thailand today for the 1998 Asian X Games qualifier to be held from April 22 to April 26 in Phuket.

Bondan Kartika, Ronald Mamarimbing, Nur Rosyid, Binsar Nainggolan and Etha Hendrawati, the only woman on the team, will compete in both the difficulty and speed categories.

The Phuket games will be Etha's third international trip. She placed fourth in the 1996 Asian Wall Climbing Competition in Singapore and took the silver medal in the Asian Wall Climbing Championship in Iran last year.

Team manager Hendricus Mutter, who also chairs the Federation of Indonesian Climbing Activities, said yesterday that his athletes were confident of finishing in the top ten.

"We expect to secure at least third place behind our archrivals Japan and South Korea," he said during a wall climbing exhibition at Pondok Indah Mall in South Jakarta.

Only the top ten finishers in the Phuket competition will qualify for the 1998 Summer X Games scheduled for June in San Diego, California.

The Phuket qualifying event will feature extreme sports like skate boarding, in-line skating, bicycle stunts, wake boarding and sport climbing. It is the initial Asian competition in radical sports.

About 200 athletes from various countries, including Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, India, China, Australia and New Zealand, will be vying for places in the Summer X Games.

Hendrikus admitted that it was difficult to develop wall climbing here due to financial limitations.

"We badly need donors to enable us to send our athletes abroad for international events," he said.

More and more young people have become interested in the sport since it was introduced in 1989, he said. Some 3,000 people from 22 provinces have now joined the federation.

Imron Z.S., a National Sports Council executive who was watching the exhibition yesterday, said the sport deserved an entry in the 2002 National Games in Surabaya because the sports council had officially recognized it. (cst)