Rivals pessimistic about RI target
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's aim of winning between 11 and 13 gold medals in track and field events at the upcoming 18th Southeast Asian Games is unrealistic, according to Thai athletics coach Suchart Jaesuraparp.
"I think it would be tremendously hard, if not impossible, for your country to meet the target of six to seven gold medals," Suchart told The Jakarta Post.
"I think three or four gold medals would be realistic enough for Indonesia," the 45-year-old coach commented. He added that his athletes, competing before their home crowd, had set their sights on harvesting between 12 and 14 golds during the Games.
Suchart was Thailand's team leader at the 11th Asian Track and Field Championships which concluded on Sunday at the Madya Senayan stadium here.
Indonesia came 14th in the championship, with two silver medals, right behind Thailand, which collected two silver and three bronze medals.
Despite the modest outcome, however, Pieter Noya, technical director of the Indonesian Athletic Association, insisted that his trainees would meet the target of winning 11 gold medals during the SEA Games.
The Indonesian track and field team stormed the 17th Games two years ago with a surprising haul of 13 golds, 11 silvers and seven bronze medals, much better than Thailand's eight, 11 and seven.
Suchart, the Thai national coach for the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay, said he was informed that chairman of the Indonesian Athletic Association, Mohammad Hasan, had expected only six to seven golds from his athletes.
However, the Indonesian National Sports Council announced earlier this month that it thought 11 to 13 golds from track and field in Chiang Mai was achievable.
Suchart, four-time SEA Games sprint champion in the 1970s, said it would not even be easy for Indonesia to earn the top honors in the women's 5,000m and 10,000m at the SEA Games, in spite of middle- and long-distance runner Tri Asih Handayani, who managed to grab two silvers from the two events in the recent Asian track and field meet.
Suchart was not sure whether Handayani would be able to outrun Myanmar's Pa Pa, who finished fifth at last year's Asian Games in Hiroshima, behind two Chinese and two Japanese.
Myanmar also has another good long-distance runner, Khin Khin Hwe, who also finished fifth at Hiroshima Asian Games behind two Chinese and two Japanese runners, he added.
Singapore poses yet another threat. "We have a world-class women's marathon runner. Her name is Ivone. She's a Briton married to a Singaporean and now she is our citizen. In the women's 10,000m she places around 10th in the world," Singapore's team manager, Bay You Joea, told The Post.
"You also cannot hope for very much from your sprinters because you rely only on Mardi Lestari. Remember, Malaysia has very strong sprinters -- more than one," said Suchart, who works in the letter-of-credit section of the Bangkok Bank.
He was referring to Malaysia's Nur Herman Majid, who finished third behind China and Japan in the men's 110m hurdles; and Azmi Ibrahim and Watson Nyambek, first and fourth semifinalists respectively in the men's 100m dash at the recently concluded Asian championships. (arf)