Sports Council urged to improve performance

By Primastuti Handayani

JAKARTA (JP): Although Indonesia won six gold, 10 silver and 11 bronze medals at the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok in December, many sports experts expressed their dissatisfaction with the results, saying that national athletes could have done better.

They urged the National Sports Council, responsible for sports development in the country, to better their work with sports organizations in preparing athletes in the third millennium by arranging training programs based on sports science and technology.

The council's national congress, to be held from Feb. 22 to Feb. 24 at Hotel Mulia Senayan, hopes to find ways to improve the council's performance.

The council's ambitious training program, Garuda Emas (Golden Garuda), which aims to put Indonesia in sixth position at the 2006 Asian Games, needs to be conducted jointly by various related government and sport groups.

Sports expert Mangombar Ferdinand Siregar said: "The truth is, Golden Garuda must be carried out by the ministry of education and culture and state minister of youth affairs and sports office." Siregar is also the Badminton Association of Indonesia's athletes development deputy.

He said the main barrier in sports development was that experts became officials at the council, sports organizations and its chapters.

"Clubs, sports development backbones, only have leftovers from the experts. No wonder if our young athletes are less qualified."

Guideline

Tennis observer Benny Mailili said that the council and sports organizations must arrange a guideline for talent scouting before the organizations carried this out in their provincial chapters.

"So far, all athletes suggested by various organizations were accepted by the council because the council hadn't develop athletes but sports organizations," he said.

Benny said young athletes, preparing for the 2006 Asiad, must be admitted to the Ragunan sports school.

"They must be about 12 or 13 years old because they can go to the junior and senior high schools at Ragunan," he said.

Second, they must be coached by qualified foreign or local coaches, who refer to sports science and technology.

"If those young athletes are handled by less-qualified coaches, I'm afraid they are bound to get injured," Benny said.

Separately, the council's athletes development deputy, Mohamad Hindarto, said the council can start by grooming the Asiad silver medalists to win gold at the 2002 Asiad in Pusan, South Korea.

"We have to make programs in stages, starting from the 1999 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Bandar Seri Begawan, the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and the 2001 SEA Games before competing in the Asiad," he said.

Hindarto said the council's provincial training centers, sports science and technology center and the education and course center would join his division to work better for athlete development.

"The three subdivisions cooperating will support our efforts in grooming athletes for international events," he said.

Criticized

Benny criticized the sports science and technology center for only working during multisports events.

"They never work if there is a single event like tennis or badminton circuit tournaments. They only work when we are facing multievents like the SEA Games, Asian Games or the Olympics," he said.

Siregar said sports officials, from those at clubs up to the council, must be professional and have good business management.

"They must work professionally and get a salary. If they make mistakes, we can fire them," he said.

He also urged officials to arrange training programs and financial estimations for 10-year or 20-year terms.

Benny supported the idea, saying that sports organizations only needed people who could work well.

The council's vice chairman, Arie Sudewo, said the council plans to earn Rp 300 billion (US$33.7 million) to be collected to finance long-term training programs.

"So far, we only rely on donations from the government and the private sector," he said.

Arie hoped the private sector would learn from the 1997 SEA Games to build sports marketing in the country.

"I have spoken to members of the SEA Games consortium and they gave up on sports marketing, saying that enough is enough. We have to learn something. We can sell merchandise of our athletes locally. Who knows, someday our athletes will have international achievements like our tennis players and shuttlers and we can sell their merchandise," he said.