Skeleton RI team to compete in Asiad

JAKARTA (JP): Cash-strapped Indonesia may have no choice but to send a tiny team of 52 athletes to the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok in December, a National Sports Council official has said.

Training director for the national Asian Games team Muhammad Hindarto calculated on Thursday that the government's latest commitment of Rp 2.5 billion (US$175,500) would be only be enough to cover the daily expenses of the athletes plus 32 officials.

The funds, to be taken from the state budget, exclude Rp 5 billion already allocated by the government to finance centralized training programs which are now underway.

Each team member will receive pocket money from the council, although Hindarto said the amount would be very small.

"Due to the limited number of places in the squad, we will only allow potential gold medal winners to travel," Hindarto said as quoted by Antara.

He refused to disclose which sports the athletes would come from, saying that the council would make an announcement next month. But he indicated that Indonesia might not take part in team events.

Early this year the council asked 21 sports organizations to groom their athletes for the Asiad and predicted that 150 people would qualify for the quadrennial event.

Indonesia sent a team of 151 sportsmen and women to the last Asian Games, held in Hiroshima, Japan, four years ago. They brought home three gold, 12 silver and 11 bronze medals.

When asked, Hindarto refused to comment on the prospects for the national soccer team.

The council's chairman, Wismoyo Arismunandar, recently promised to let the soccer team go to Bangkok if it won the Tiger Cup championship in Vietnam in September. The tournament is contested between eight Southeast Asian countries.

Hindarto was also reluctant to talk about the national men's tennis team, which lost 3-2 to Lebanon in a Davis Cup Asia- Oceania Zone Group I play-off last week.

"We have asked the team to evaluate its performance," he said.

Commenting on women's middle-distance runner Supriati Sutono, Hindarto said she needed to train harder and improve her personal best to win a place in the Asian Games squad.

Supriati clocked a time of 16 minutes 12.13 seconds to finish sixth in the 5,000 meters event at the recent Asian Athletics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. Her time was nearly half a second slower than her best mark which she set at the 19th Southeast Asian Games here last year. (yan)