Spirit of sportsmanship

Thank you very much for your excellent spirit of sportsmanship in running an -- long awaited, and in my opinion, long overdue -- article about Poul Erik Hoyer Larsen winning his much-deserved Olympic gold medal in the Men's Singles Badminton (page 13, Sports News, the Aug. 6 edition of The Jakarta Post).

My heartiest congratulations to you for winning, Poul Erik. This time, thank Heavens, you were not harassed by the exasperating, ear-shattering, and raucous Indonesian hecklers supporting their own champions -- and for this, I, one of the millions of Indonesians who supports true sportsmanship and fair play, am duly grateful.

However, my joy in reading the above-mentioned article was considerably dampened by the following paragraph, still in the same article: "Mia Audina...who believes God guides her every movement...kept Indonesian spirits alive by reaching the finals. But Bang Soo-hyun of South Korea was too clever for the 16-year old and her celestial controller and 11-6, 11-7."

I believe that The Creator had His reasons for letting Miss Bang Soo-hyun, who is also a devout Christian, win. To say that Miss Bang was "too clever" for Her Own Creator shows a distressing lack of understanding of God and His works -- and is, I believe, also very offensive to all believers in God who happen to read this article (although He would, I'm sure, forgive the article's writers for "they do not know what they do").

TAMI KOESTOMO

Bogor, West Java