W

ith 56 names recently discarded from the list, Indonesia is going to Singapore for the upcoming Southeast Asian (SEA) Games with 500 athletes.

The biennial sporting showcase will run on June 5-16.

'€œThe athletes are those expected to win either gold, silver or bronze medal,'€ Suwarno, chairman of Satlak Prima, a task force assigned to prepare the athletes, said on its official website satlakprima.com.

The trainee list registered 556 as of March, but Satlak Prima submitted 500 names to the Indonesian Olympic Committee (KOI) for the games.

'€œWe'€™re on the schedule. We need to send those names to the Singapore National Olympic Council on April 1,'€ said assistant to the youth and sports minister on development and partnership Gatot S. Dewa Broto.

The number of athletes was also reduced, Suwarno said, to adjust to the quota set by the SEA Games
organizers.

He mentioned cycling as one of the sports affected by the quota policy, resulting in the task force sending six athletes each in the men'€™s and women'€™s event, while they had been training 19 athletes. '€œWe have to eliminate 11 of them'€.

Badminton, among Indonesia'€™s gold prospect events, will be represented by 20 athletes who will compete in group and individual events.

Gold, according to the Indonesian Badminton Association (PBSI), is expected to come from men'€™s doubles and mixed doubles events with Angga Pratama/Ricky Karanda Suwardi and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo/Markus Fenaldi Gideon; Riky Widianto/Richi Puspita Dili and Praveen Jordan/Debby Susanto spearheading the respective events.

Suwarno said that the eliminated athletes would continue to train at the national training camp for following multisport events such as the 2017 SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur and the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta.

Indonesia will compete in 33 out of 39 sports at the games, which feature some 7000 athletes from 11 countries in the region with 402 gold medals at stake.

Earlier this year, Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi cited before the sports commission at the House of Representatives that he was aiming to improve Indonesia'€™s position from fourth at the 2013 SEA Games in Myanmar to runner-up at the Singapore event.

He said that he had to downsize the target because a number of events where Indonesian athletes were expected to excel in the medal chase had been dropped from the 28th SEA Games.

The eliminated events are chess, karate, kempo, weightlifting, wrestling and beach volleyball.

It has been projected that Indonesia will collect up to 70 gold medals to be the runner-up at the event.

Indonesia had been the dominant force from when it first competed in 1977 up until 1997, with Thailand being the only nation to steal the championship title in 1985 and 1995.

The 1999 SEA Games in Brunei marked Indonesia'€™s decline with it falling out of the top 2 on the medal tally for the first time.

It regained its championship crown for the 10th time when it hosted the event in 2011 before relinquishing it two years later in Myanmar where it collected 65 gold, 84 silver and 111 bronze medals to finish fourth among 11 participating countries.