T

he gold medal and two bronze medals Indonesian students won at the 2013 World Robot Olympiad on Sunday mean a lot. So does the victory of Indonesia'€™s mixed doubles badminton team of Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir at the China Open Superseries Premier in Shanghai on the same day.

Their achievements indeed keep Indonesia on the map of global competition. The country badly needs such international recognition, which helps us hold our heads high in the face of national woes, such as entrenched corruption that has eaten away state funds for fighting poverty, political noise that slows the consolidation of democracy and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy that discourages business and investment.

A gold medal and a couple of bronze medals from teenagers Riki, Kelvin, Hubert, Edward, Louis and Kevin show to the world that Indonesia will be a player in future global competition, when technological mastery will play a more decisive role than ever. These students will be among millions of the country'€™s next generation that will determine the survival of this nation.

The Shanghai championship on Sunday not only helped Tontowi and Liliyana end their title drought, since winning the World Championship back in August, but it also gave them a morale boost for the rest of the year and ahead of the upcoming season.

In addition to a few men'€™s doubles teams, Tontowi and Liliyana are the Indonesian team'€™s best bets to carry the national flag in the badminton world, which has seen China rule the roost for the past few decades. If Tontowi and Liliyana keep playing like they did on Sunday, Indonesia'€™s chance of winning Olympic gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 remains a viable possibility.

Like it or not, badminton is still Indonesia'€™s best sport in international competition. Given the popularity of the sport, which is played in the streets of almost every neighborhood, especially in Java, natural talents are scattered across the archipelago. They just need opportunities to develop themselves and compete to emerge as champions.

Soccer is another sport Indonesia can hope to shine in, also due to a promising pool of young talent. Favorable demographics paid dividends when Indonesian'€™s under-19 team carved out a piece of history winning the country'€™s first Southeast Asian title in September. The same team qualified for the Asian level competition in Myanmar next year.

The euphoric celebrations that followed the junior team'€™s success constituted an outpouring of national pride that has so often been elusive.

But few would realize that such achievements are the result of a long process, trial and error and ups and downs. The old saying '€œno pain, no gain'€ holds true, but many of us prefer a shortcut to hard work, as evinced by the culture of instant gratification that prevails in our society.

The lack of passion for hard work explains why entrepreneurship and innovation grow slowly and why we lag behind our neighbors. The need for an '€œachievement trait'€ is what we apparently miss.