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mid plans to secure more qualifying spots at the upcoming Olympic Games in London this year, most Indonesian athletes have shown weak performances in Olympic sports.

“At the last SEA Games, from our total of 182 gold medals, 85 of those golds came in 333 Olympic sporting events,” Indonesia Gold Program (PRIMA) chief Aslizar Tanjung told reporters in Jakarta on Thursday. The recent SEA Games featured 333 events from 24 Olympic sports.

“With such figures, it means that our athletes’ strength in Olympic sports is at about 25.5 percent,” he added.

Aslizar referred to Indonesia’s recent achievements at the biennial sporting event, which was held in Jakarta and Palembang, South Sumatra, in November last year.

With this statistic, Indonesia’ athletes may well face more than just a rocky road as they attempt to perform at the London Games. Indonesia has currently secured six Olympic spots: five in weightlifting and one in archery.

Sports officials, including Aslizar, have repeatedly declared that Indonesia is aiming for more in London than the single gold, silver and three bronze medals collected at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

As part of the efforts, the country has planned to send up to 50 athletes in its contingent for London, which is double the number sent to Beijing.

“We are urging more athletes to take preliminary tests for the Olympics in the last 170 days, so that they can participate in the London Games. Even if [those athletes are] not good enough for medals, they will earn good experience. It’s good for young athletes,” said Aslizar.

To meet the sizable target, PRIMA has been endorsing 87 potential athletes from archery, athletics, badminton, beach volleyball, boxing, fencing, rowing, swimming as well as weightlifting to several Olympics’ qualifiers.

“Although we’ve secured a spot in archery, I propose two more archers in the team event to partake in a qualifier. Hopefully, we can get extra tickets for London,” said Aslizar.

“Swimming is another case. We’ve grabbed four Olympics spots, but it is in Qualification B, which is prone to losing medal berths due to the quota limits set by the organizers.

“I hope we can send seven of our swimmers to several Olympic qualifiers in order to increase our spots in Qualification A,” explained Aslizar.

He said that I Gede Siman, the recent SEA Games’ gold medalist in the men’s 100-meter backstroke, had a solid chance to qualify in the A list for the Olympics.

“Siman’s personal best time was 55.59 seconds in the SEA Games. He passed Qualification B’s limit at 56.30 seconds. And I’m sure, if he trains harder, he can be included in Qualification A, which has a limit at 54.40 seconds,” said Aslizar.

In order to give full support to the six qualified athletes and 84 potential ones, Aslizar said that he was awaiting approval of legal documents from the PRIMA board of executives’ president Tono Suratman.

“The overall financial needs for all of those athletes will be less than Rp 50 billion. And as promised, the government is fully committed to those needs,” he added.