TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post

Indonesia falters ignominiously at London

As the 2012 Olympics wrapped up after the two-week sporting spectacle, Indonesia languished in the doldrums as our failed athletes came home without any gold

Mustaqim Adamrah (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, August 14, 2012

Share This Article

Change Size

Indonesia falters ignominiously at London

A

s the 2012 Olympics wrapped up after the two-week sporting spectacle, Indonesia languished in the doldrums as our failed athletes came home without any gold.

To add to the national shame, shuttlers Gresia Polii and Meliana Jauhari were ignominiously ejected from the Olympics for unsportsmanlike conduct. Along with three other pairs from China and South Korea, Greysia and Meliana were disqualified for play-to-lose tactics during group matches.

This continues the downward spiral in performance since Indonesia won two golds in Barcelona 20 years ago, both in badminton.

Since Barcelona, the gold collection had dropped although we somehow managed to cling on our one-gold haul up to Beijing four years ago.

With only one silver and a bronze, thanks to the weight lifting team, sport authorities concede that the country has paid dearly for relying too much on badminton while the athletes were suffering a dip in performance.

“We regret that we didn’t take any gold from the London Olympics because we only depended on badminton,” Youth and Sports Minister Andi Mallarangeng said during a ceremony for the Indonesian weight lifting medalists.

“The ups and downs in badminton therefore directly determine our overall achievement in the Olympics,” he said, conceding that badminton was going down at the moment.

He rejected the suggestions that Indonesian sport in general was in decline given the athletes’ achievement at Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, Asian Games, Asian Beach Games and Asian Students’ Games. Hosted in Jakarta and South Sumatra’s Palembang, Indonesia swept 182 golds in the biennial multi-sport event to stand at the top of the medal tally in 2011.

The 2011 success, while marking Indonesia’s return to regional dominance, did not seem to have inspired the athletes to perform better at the global level.

Indonesia collected a gold, silver and three bronze medals in Beijing Olympics 2008. The dismal showing in London has drawn concern from lawmakers, former athletes and academicians.

Former Olympian Susi Susanti described the national sports as going nowhere.

“Every stakeholder, be it the PBSI [Indonesian Badminton Association], the government or the badminton community, must dig deeper to know why this happened,” Susi, who won gold in 1992 Barcelona Olympics and bronze in 1996 Atlanta, told The Jakarta Post.

“For sure, we are going nowhere while other countries are running very fast. We had our days of success. But it is in the past. Now we have to realize that we have been left far behind and need to work really hard to fix things up, starting from athlete development. In order to do that, we need to know the real reasons why we lost.”

Lawmaker Utut Adianto pointed the finger at excessive reliance on badminton. He saw Indonesia’s debacle in Thomas and Uber Cup in May as bad omens for the later Olympic campaign.

“The omens are there to see that we are getting left further behind. We didn’t even reach the Thomas and Uber Cup semifinals,” said the former chess icon and member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

Indonesia sent nine shuttlers among the 22-strong delegation to London to participate in 8 sports.

While the Beijing Olympics witnessed the shuttlers’ success to bring home silver and bronze in addition to gold, they returned home empty handed from London.

Adrianti Firdasari, who played in the women’s singles, said she was excited to take part in the Olympics for the first time but suffered from no nerves until she was finally forced to bow out to world No. 2 Wang Xin of China.

“Maybe it was because my opponent was way above me,” she said upon arrival at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Wednesday evening.

Simon Santoso and Taufik Hidayat also fell against their more highly rated opponents. Taufik
failed to conjure the winning traits that gave him the title in Athens 2004. Tontowi Yahya and Liliyana Natsir were close to a medal but were stopped in the semifinals and lost to a Danish pair in the bronze-medal match.

Other athletes in the other sports generally turned to be also-rans.

Swimmer I Gede Siman Sudhartawa, who made his Olympic debut, said he did not regret that he failed to maker the top 16 as initially targeted.

“I feel proud to have competed in the lanes with top world swimmers who have often participated in world competitions. So, it was quite an experience to me,” he said.

“For me, there was one problem … the water was 25 [degree Celsius], which is cooler than the water temperature in the pool I used for practice in Singapore, which was 27. So, I swam slower in the last 25 [meters] because the water was too cold for my legs,” said Siman, who competed in the men’s 100m.

For Indonesian Fencing Association deputy secretary Hans Nayoan, said it was already a “big achievement” for fencer Diah Permatasari, who competed in the women’s individual saber, to have qualified for the Olympics. She was eliminated in her first match.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Shooting Association deputy chairman Anthony Charles Sunarjo said he knew that there would be no hope for 16-year-old Diaz Kusumawardani to win a medal because Diaz had only been active in the sport for two years, lacked experience and was in London thanks to “unused quotas”.

Indonesia had lifter Triyatno and Eko Yuli Irawan to thank. Their silver and bronze contributions salvaged our otherwise total blushes.

As far as regional competitiveness is concerned, Indonesia tied in 63rd position with Malaysia and several other countries but was behind Thailand, which managed to win two silver and a bronze medals.

{

Your Opinion Counts

Your thoughts matter - share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.

Enter at least 30 characters
0 / 30

Thank You

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.