Sports council rethinks scheduling

BANDUNG (JP): The National Sports Council's research and development department is looking at ways to reschedule national sports events and national training schedules to help athletes.

For many years, the council has staged the National Games in September at the start of the school semester.

Indra Djati Sidi, the council's head of research and development, told The Jakarta Post recently that some organizations had problems gathering athletes for events because of random event scheduling.

"Ideally, national training must last one month. Here we have one year training," he said, adding that athletes were getting bored with their programs which they had abandoned their jobs and studies for.

"Imagine an athlete who leaves work and only counts on his allowance as an athlete from the council. Its a big sacrifice," he said.

Many athletes, who are still at high school or university, will think twice before leaving their courses to join national training because of clashing schedules between studies and training.

"The Summer Olympic Games is always staged during the holiday season. The NCAA basketball competitions in the United States always take place on weekends. Professional athletes can play on work days but in the evening," he said.

Indra said athletes had to choose an alternative. They could quit work or they could choose not compete in an event and miss their peak.

"People should understand that sport and athletes' achievements are important. But they are yet to show their appreciation of sport," he said.

Indonesia must be satisfied with its limited budget for sport.

"Our national coaches, who have adequate academic training and methods, are few in number. They don't even have facilities," Indra said.

Indra said that hiring foreign coaches might be a solution. But many sports organizations could not afford them.

He said local talent scouting was inefficient.

"Our talent scouting program is only for national training. But the fatal factor is that old athletes, who joined the National and SEA Games, still dominate training. The regeneration program has not gone smoothly."

Indra said there were three key programs in national sports development: training for the SEA Games, Asian Games and Golden Garuda mega-project.

"If all goes well, we hope that in 10 years we can see more young talent in all provinces," he said, adding that good scheduling could guarantee the training programs' success. (ahy)