Sports council to start training for Asiad soon

JAKARTA (JP): The National Sports Council's 13th Asian Games task force decided yesterday to start training sessions for the Asiad in mid February.

Task force chairman Muhammad Hindarto said the council and sports organizations had agreed to delay the start to the second phase of training, which was to have begun on Feb. 1, due to the Idul Fitri holiday.

"Some sports organizations started training (first phase) in November. But the start of the decentralized training (second phase), for all participating sports organizations, will be in mid February," he said.

Vice chairman of the council Arie Sudewo said Monday the start was delayed because Hindarto had been unable to present the council with a training budget.

Hindarto had difficulty preparing a detailed budget because of the volatility of the rupiah against the U.S. dollar.

Arie said another reason for the delay was that four provincial administrations -- Jakarta, West Java, Central Java and East Jakarta -- were unable to help finance training scheduled to be held in their respective provinces.

Separately, State Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Hayono Isman said at his residence that the delay would give sports organizations more time to prepare their athletes.

"The council will also have more time to recalculate the costs of sending an Indonesian contingent to the Asiad. The President has asked the council to send a small contingent to the Asiad due to the economic turmoil.

"I hope the increase in departure tax from Rp 250,000 to Rp 1 million will not become a barrier for the council. I think we can discuss it with the minister of finance," he added.

The training is to be jointly financed by the council, sports organizations and provincial administrations.

Hindarto said the task force was arranging its training budget plan and hoped to have it finalized by late yesterday.

"The money has already been allocated and hopefully we can access it as soon as possible," said Hindarto, who declined to mention the figure.

The government, through the National Development Planning Board, will provide Rp 2 billion (US$190,500) instead of the Rp 16 billion requested by the council.

Hindarto said six sports organizations -- track and field, gymnastics, soccer, shooting, beach volleyball and swimming -- would fully finance their training.

"Other sports organizations will finance half their training budgets," he said.

Huge amount

The council estimates that each athlete will need Rp 2 million per month during training.

Hindarto also said that only some sports organizations had met the council's requirement on training squad size.

Among those that did meet the requirements are the gymnastics body which is only training Jonathan Mangiring Sianturi; the swimming body, preparing four athletes; the judo body, three judokas; the cycling body, eight cyclists; the fencing body, six fencers; and the rowing and canoeing bodies are training 10 and six athletes respectively.

"Other sports are training as many athletes as they can. We don't mind as long as they finance their training," Hindarto said.

Twelve athletes are being prepared for track and field events although the council only asked for one athlete. And the equestrian organization is grooming 17 riders although they were asked to prepare two, he said.

"Other sports bodies, including soccer and tae kwon do, have yet to submit a proposal on the number of athletes they will train. We'll wait for our soccer team results until the second ASEAN Tiger Cup here in September, and the national tae kwon do championships in March," he said. (lnt/yan)