Sports council to start training for Asiad soon

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)