T

he Indonesian Olympic Committee (KOI) chairwoman, Rita Subowo, has admitted that the country has not put so much effort into and has not sufficiently focused on Olympic sports, which has led to a decline in the number of athletes qualifying for the Olympics and even underperformance at the quadrennial event.

“We really need to change the government’s mindset … we should focus only on favorable [Olympic] sports, instead of only on some random ones,” Rita Subowo told a press conference in Jakarta on Thursday.

“A long-term plan and funding support from the government and sport stakeholders should also be applied to [Olympic] sports development if we want to perform well,” said the former chairwoman of the Indonesian Sports Council (KONI).

The Youth and Sports Ministry previously announced its ambitious plan to send between 30 and 50 athletes to the London Games. However, so far only 17 athletes have qualified for the London Olympics compared to the Athens and Beijing Olympics, when the country sent 24 athletes to each of the games.

The 17 athletes qualifying for London games comprise six in weightlifting, nine in badminton, and one each for archery and fencing. Indonesia is hoping to qualify in more sports, most probably swimming — in which four athletes have passed Olympic qualification “B” — and athletics.

“To my knowledge, Thailand has 33 athletes for London and Malaysia has 28,” Rita said, comparing Indonesia to the other Southeast Asian countries. “Malaysia even has nine athletes entered for diving.”

During the 2011 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, Thailand collected gold medals in nine Olympic sports, Malaysia and Vietnam in six sports, while Indonesia won gold in only in five sports.

Former national swimmer Lukman Niode even said that Indonesia had made a huge mistake by aiming too high at the SEA Games rather than the Olympics.

“You have to understand that the SEA Games is at the first level in the sports world, while the Olympics, the pinnacle, is at the fourth level … It is a lot harder to qualify for the Olympics rather than the SEA Games.

“I don’t mean to condescend, but why don’t we focus on potential Olympic sports rather than celebrating too much on [non-Olympic sports like] roller-skating, for example?” said Lukman, who finished in 21st place at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Lukman lamented the fact that most athletes were more interested in participating in national games (locally known as PON) rather than in Olympic qualifications.

“PON is like a zero level, but because of the hundreds of million rupiah in bonuses from local governments for each gold medal winner, they choose PON instead.”

Lukman, who accompanied the Indonesian contingent to the Beijing Olympics, said he felt embarrassed seeing Nigeria send 102 athletes to the 2008 Games.

“Indonesia had more than 200 million people [in 2008], but it only had 24 athletes in seven sports. Whereas Nigeria sent 102 athletes to the Games, of whom a lot of them were entered in athletics. It was a serious shock for me,” he added.

There are 28 Olympic sports including badminton, athletics, swimming, archery, tennis and soccer.

Indonesia took part in the Olympics for the first time in 1952, when high jumper Maram Sudarmodjo, swimmer Habib Suharto and weightlifter Thio Ging Hwie qualified for the Helsinki Games.

It took the country 36 years to win its first medal in 1988, when Nurfitriyana Saiman, Kusuma Wardhani and Lilies Handayani won a silver medal for the country in archery.

The first gold was won 40 years later at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when shuttlers Allan Budikusuma and Susi Susanti won golds in the men’s singles and women’s singles, respectively.

Since then, Indonesian shuttlers have consistently achieved one gold medal every four years, starting with men’s doubles pair Rexy Mainaky and Ricky Subagja in 1996; men’s doubles’ Tony Gunawan and Candra Wijaya in 2000; men’singles winner Taufik Hidayat in 2004; and men’s doubles winners Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan in 2008.