Swimmer takes PON opening-day laurels
JAKARTA (JP): The 14th National Games (PON) swung into full action yesterday but failed to reach full speed as only two national records fell.
It was a flat opening for the sporting event which is billed as the platform from which the country's athletes spring toward better performances at international events. However 10 meet records were broken, two in swimming and eight in weight lifting.
Catherine Surya stole the limelight. Arising from the ashes of the country's biggest doping scandal, which cost her the eight gold medals she won in the last Games three years ago, Catherine returned to the podium in style with two golds for West Java.
She splashed to the 200-meter butterfly gold medal in a new national best of two minutes and 16.14 seconds, destroying West Sumatran Olga Halim's two-year-old mark by 2.42 seconds.
Catherine, who trained in Australia in preparation for the Games, grabbed her second top honor in the 50m freestyle, but her time of 27.80 was 30 hundredths of a second slower than the national record held by Elsa Manora Nasution of Jambi.
National record
Earlier yesterday morning Lampung's female lifter Winarni became the first athlete to set a national record. She improved Supeni's national record of 105kgs in the clean and jerk category by half a kilogram to win the women's 50kg division.
Yogyakarta's female cyclist Nurhayati, who won the 20km Individual Time Trial, was the first athlete to mount the top step of the podium. The winner of two gold medals in the Southeast Asian Games in Thailand last December struck the maiden gold of this sporting event in 29 minutes and 38.95 seconds.
Success in the Karate competition ensured the host Jakarta took a slender lead at the top of the medal standings after the first day of competition yesterday. The Japanese martial art gave Jakarta three out of five gold medals on offer.
The medal tally highlights the dominance of Javanese teams, with the overall defending champion leading with six golds, seven silvers and four bronzes, in front of West Java with four golds, four silvers and eight bronzes.
A soccer row tarnished the Games yesterday when a security officer beat Acehnese goalkeeper Zulkarnaen while he was leading his team to lodge a protest over the marching orders given to teammate Salman in their preliminary round match against Central Java.
Zulkarnaen suffered serious injuries to his leg after the incident that caused a 10-minute interruption to the match won by Central Java 1-0. Sugi Utomo scored the winner five minutes into the match.
Aceh's deputy chief of the mission, Zainuddin Hamid, quickly wrote a letter to the PON organizing committee, protesting the "brutal treatment" meted out to his side.
Track and field, the sport with the most gold medals, will begin today at the Madya Senayan stadium, with six of the 44 golds up for grabs on the opening day of competition.
Medal tally (after the first day of competition):
G S B Jakarta 6 7 4 West Java 5 4 8 East Java 3 2 0 Central Java 2 1 3 Lampung 2 1 3 S. Sulawesi 1 3 3 Yogyakarta 1 1 1 Jambi 1 2 0 S. Kalimantan 1 1 1 Irian Jaya 1 0 0 N. Sumatra 0 1 2 Bali 0 0 1 E. Kalimantan 0 0 1 Riau 0 0 1 W. Sumatra 0 0 1 W. Kalimantan 0 0 1