F

inancial issues has caused some sport federations to do away with reserve players when they compete in the upcoming Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in Myanmar in December, a sports insider has said.

The Indonesian Gold Program (Prima) operational head Surya Dharma revealed in a recent interview with The Jakarta Post that they lacked the Rp 60 billion (US$5.05 million) needed to prepare athletes for some multi-sport events this year, which included the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in South Korea in June; Asian Youth Para Games in Kuala Lumpur in August; Asian Youth Games in Nanjing in August; Islamic Solidarity Games in Palembang, South Sumatra from September to October.

The meager funds have also resulted in the suspension of Prima Pratama, a development program for young althetes.

'€œWe are only given Rp 250 billion for all of those events and programs, which is minimal,'€ Surya said.

'€œI have to figure out ways to overcome the situation so that we can still send our athletes to all those events, one of which is to be very selective about which athletes we send,'€ he said.

He added that for the SEA Games, teams for some events including takraw (kick-volleyball), muay thai (Thai-kickboxing) and futsal have to compete without reserve players.

Athletes from other sports, like hockey, petanque (bowls), women'€™s futsal and women'€™s basketball had their training camps delayed until March while other athletes began their training as early as January.

Those sports are seen as unlikely sources of gold medals for Indonesia.

Indonesia has prepared 660 athletes and 236 officials and coaches for the SEA Games in Myanmar, which will run from Dec. 11 to 22.

The regional multi-event sporting showcase features participants from 11 countries with a total of 460 gold medals in 33 different sports up for grabs. The last SEA Games hosted in Jakarta and Palembang in 2011 listed 545 gold medals in 44 sports.

Surya also complained about the late arrival of training equipment.

'€œWe don'€™t have any problem technically, all athletes are ready to compete. The only issue now is their supporting equipment,'€ Surya said.

The procurement process for the athletes'€™ equipment, he said, was only completed recently by the Youth and Sports Ministry just a month before the Games.

The late arrival of equipment, which he blamed on a lengthy tender process for the procurement, left some athletes with old training equipment and facilities.

He said for some sports they had relied on assistance from local administrations in providing training facilities.

'€œOur athletes have been training in Kalimantan and Sumatra because those provinces have allowed us to borrow their shooting range for training,'€ division head of achievement at the Indonesian Shooting and Hunting Association (Perbakin) Glen Cliffton said on a different occasion.

'€œOur allowance from the National Sports Committee [KONI] was used to buy bullets so we can continue training even without equipment from the government'€ he said.

He revealed that since the host decided to cut more than half of the shooting events to only six, compared to the 14 events held in the previous SEA Games in Indonesia, Perbakin aimed for a realistic medals target of winning one gold, one silver and one bronze.

'€œHowever, we expect to maintain the previous achievement of two gold medals,'€ he said.