Athlete's Efficiency Effect, Indonesia Potentially Loses 30 Gold Medals At SEA Games Hanoi

Menpora Zainudi Amali (Cosmas Kopong Beda/VOI)

JAKARTA – Indonesia has the potential to lose 30 gold medals at the SEA Games Hanoi 2021. This is the impact of the efficiency of athletes sent to this two-year event in the Southeast Asian region.

The Indonesian contingent for the Hanoi SEA Games was announced at the Wisma Auditorium of the Ministry of Youth and Sports (Kemenpora), Jakarta, on Wednesday, March 30, 2022. A total of 476 athletes from 32 sports will be dispatched.

That number experienced an efficiency of 43.4 percent of the number of athletes sent to the 2019 Philippine SEA Games, namely 841 athletes. This efficiency has the potential to have a big influence on the gold medal of the Indonesian contingent.

"With only 40 sports being competed, we lost the potential of around 30 gold because the number that won gold in the 2019 SEA games was not contested, but from the analysis, hopefully there will be a replacement from another place," said Minister of Youth and Sports Zainudin Amali.

This efficiency is carried out through process stages and database-based identification of athlete achievement records in each sport. In addition, this efficiency is also made by paying attention to several things.

One of them is the leading sport that is listed in the National Sports Great Design (DBON), which is 14 sports. However, only 13 of them went to Vietnam because rock climbing was not contested this year.

In addition, efficiency is also carried out by looking at the potential for medals in each sport that will be sent. Then, the next consideration is the limited budget from the government due to the allocation for the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I am involved so that I can convey as efficiently as possible because this must be financed by state finances, now our concentration of funding is on the COVID-19 pandemic, both in handling health, handling social impacts and how to grow the economy," said the figure from Gorontalo.

In Vietnam, Indonesia will send 246 athletes from 24 sports that are included in the DBON. Meanwhile, the number of non-DBON athletes sent was 230 from 18 sports.

When participating in the Philippines, Indonesia managed to gain 72 gold medals and sit in fourth place in the final medal standings. At that time, Indonesia was behind Thailand in third place, Vietnam in second, and the host Philippines in first place.

The Hanoi SEA Games will take place from 12-23 May. A total of 40 branches will be contested and 526 numbers will be contested.