No Shortcuts to Glory

It took Susy Susanti 11 years from when she started playing badminton until, as a teenager, she won her first title at the 1989 Indonesia Open. She went on to dominate the sport, collecting the 1992 Barcelona Olympics women’s singles gold medal, the All-England and eventually winning the Indonesia Open six times.

Susy, now 38, is an example of an athlete willing to sacrifice her youth and go through the hard training to be a champion. All world-class athletes must put in the long hours practicing to achieve their goals.

It’s a simple message for success: You can’t get it instantly – whether in sports, science and or any other field. Whatever you dream of becoming, it takes hard work and persistence to achieve. Indonesia’s sports ministry has put that message on a giant billboard in front of its office: “A champion is not made instantly”.

But those words stand out as pure jargon. Today, Indonesian athletes rarely make it to the podiums at international events. Once a champion in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is now an also-ran, falling behind Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Questions have been put out there, answers have been given but unfortunately little action has been taken – or if it has, it hasn’t been done properly. It is somewhat ironic as Indonesia first initiated an integrated sports training center and academy in Ragunan, South Jakarta, during Jakarta governor Ali Sadikin’s tenure in the 1970s. The idea was not to let a talented child sacrifice either studies or sporting talent, but to become a complete individual in the quest to achieve.

Indonesia’s sports guru Mangombar Ferdinand Siregar, who helped Ali realize the idea and who was also the mastermind behind the nation’s first Olympic golds in 1992, says: “There should be a correlation between sports training and the school curriculum.”

Sports and education must complement and complete each other. Through sports, children learn discipline, sportsmanship and how to reach their goals. Through formal schooling, children get more knowledge. To make the two things work together, children need support from their parents to navigate the long and winding road to become a “true” champion in their chosen field and in their lives.

A huge country such as Indonesia has the potential to emerge as a sporting powerhouse just like the United States and China. It is unfortunate that the education system and sports development in the country do not support each other as they do in many other countries, including neighboring Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Siregar has proposed a permanent cooperation between the education ministry, sports ministry and the National Sports Council to discuss the best way to develop sports and athletes from an early age. The current situation is that each of the three has its own programs that sometimes overlap with the others.

What the country needs is the political will from the government to change the situation. Instead of trying different ways of improving sports development, there is nothing wrong in going back to what previous governments did during Indonesia’s international sporting heyday.

Susy learned the discipline and hard work required to become a champion at the Ragunan sports academy and the National Training Center. She has been among the few who has enjoyed success both on the court and off, a world and Olympic champion and also an established businesswoman. What she went through is a valuable lesson for her juniors to prepare themselves for the tough road ahead, not only in sporting events but also in real life.

+ Primastuti Handayani

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