Heard about the Indonesian runner who went to the Olympics and came back victorious although he did not win a single medal? It turned out that he had broken his own national record during the qualifying rounds. This is a joke that only Indonesians can appreciate. We have become so inward looking as a nation, that we go to an international competition not with the intention of winning, but rather to compete against ourselves.
With the prospect of coming home with bags of medals very slim, you could forgive Indonesian athletes representing the country in Beijing this summer for leaving with this kind of attitude. It still beats shopping, which is probably the objective of the "officials" who always seem to outnumber the athletes in the Indonesian Olympics contingent.
But here is another reason why Indonesia is lagging behind most other countries when it comes to competitive sports. For the second consecutive time, most Indonesians will be deprived of the chance to follow the Summer Olympics from their living rooms.
To date, not a single free-to-air TV channel has bought the rights to broadcast the Olympics in Indonesia. With less than a month before the start of the Beijing Olympics, it does not look like there will be any taker.
Most of the nation missed the 2004 Athens Olympics. A cable service company did buy the broadcast rights for Indonesia at the last minute and made Olympic programs available to its limited subscribers in Jakarta.
Before 2004, watching the Olympics was something that many of us had taken as a God-given right. Even long before the era of commercial television (which only hit Indonesia in 1989), state-run TVRI brought the Olympics into our living rooms every four years, for much of the 1970s and 1980s.
The nation wept with badminton star Susi Susanti when she presented Indonesia with its first-ever Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in 1992, as our national anthem, Indonesia Raya, played, a feat repeated a day later when Alan Budikusuma won gold in the men's singles badminton event. We shared the joy with Rexy Mainaky and Ricky Subagja when they won gold in badminton men's doubles at the Atlanta Olympics four years later.
Little did we know that the victory of Tony Gunawan and Chandra Wijaya in the men's doubles badminton event in Sydney in 2000 would be the last time such an important Olympic moment for Indonesia would be viewed by much of the country in a live telecast.
When badminton player Taufik Hidajat won the gold medal in the men's single in Athens in 2004, he was there practically by himself (watched by a handful of Indonesians who made it to Greece). The night Taufik won the medal, most Indonesians were tuned in to the usual collection of local soap operas and reality and mystical shows. Most learned about Taufik's gold medal feat only the following day.
Whatever prospects we have for winning gold medals in Beijing next month, the athletes know that they are there on their own. Their victories or losses will not be shared with the folks back home. The nation, once again, will be deprived of live television broadcasts of the Olympics.
Something has obviously changed in the way that the Olympic Games are broadcast today. For one, the Olympics have become big business, and broadcasting rights come at a huge price, which apparently no Indonesian commercial (free-to-air) channel is prepared to pay.
TV executives say the advertising revenue generated from Olympic broadcasts would be unlikely to cover the exorbitant cost of bringing the Games into our homes. Others add that the only sponsors willing to put up the advertising money are cigarette companies, but they are barred from advertising before 9:30 p.m., even if the Olympic organizers approved.
It is hard to believe that there isn't enough money to be made from broadcasting such an important and popular event as the Olympics. What these executive are really saying is that they will make more money sticking to tried and true programs like reality shows and local soaps. It is all about money in the end.
No one, not the big money-making stations or the government, seems to feel responsible for what the nation is missing out on by not being able to watch the Beijing Olympics. And among the public, few people seem to be complaining about this shortchanging from the television industry.
This may be stretching it a bit, but one wonders whether the lack of sportsmanship and competitiveness found in our national character, be it in science, education, sports, business, politics and just about every field, has something to do with the fact that we are missing out on the Olympic Games and all that they represent.
