Bike Racing Team Aims For 3 Gold Medals, Preparation Focuses On Maintaining Athlete Performance

The Indonesian cycling team continues to prepare for the 2021 SEA Games. (Photo: Instagram @icf_cycling)

JAKARTA - The Indonesian cycling team continues to finalize preparations for the 2021 SEA Games in Hanoi. The focus of preparation is now more on maintaining the performance of the athletes.

The head coach of the Indonesian cycling team, Dadang Haries Poernomo, said that currently the maintenance phase is after training for more than a year.

"There is no time for improvement and we just have to maintain it," Dadang said as quoted by Antara, Saturday, April 9.

Dadang is optimistic that with the preparations that have been made, the Indonesian cycling national team can realize the target set by the Executive Board of the Indonesian Cycling Association (PB ISSI), which is to bring home three gold medals.

"Our target is to get three gold from each of the numbers that are followed (donwhill, road race, and cross-country). Even though from the government the target is only gold," said Dadang.

Especially for the road race number, said Dadang, it has important capital because at the 2022 Asian Road and Para Cycling Championship in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on March 25-29, female cyclist Ayustina Delia Priatna showed a good performance by bringing home a silver medal.

Ayustina finished second with a time of 33 minutes 59,275 seconds. He was under the Kazakh racer Rinata Sultanova who became the champion with a time of 33 minutes 24,632 seconds.

Ayustina's results at the 2022 Asian Championships are also the best among participants from Southeast Asia. Ayustina's closest competitor was Thi Thu Mai Nguyen from Vietnam who finished sixth in 35 minutes 55.420 seconds, quite far from Ayustina.

Then, there was a cyclist from Thailand Phetdarin Somrat who finished seventh with a time of 36 minutes 34.191 seconds.

"We already have benchmarks and that has been shown by Ayu at the Asian Championships in Tajikistan. The preparations are sufficient and we continue to strive so that the peak performance of athletes is maintained until the SEA Games takes place," said Dadang.

At the previous edition of the SEA Games in the Philippines in 2019, Indonesia won seven medals with details of one gold, four silver and two bronze in the cycling sport.

The only gold was achieved by Aiman Cahyadi who fell in the men's time trial number. The silver came from the men's team time trial number, the men's team road race, the women's downhill through Tiara Andini Prastika, and Toni Syarifudin in the men's BMX time trial number.

The two bronze medals went to Andy Prayoga in the men's Donwhill event and Ayustina Delia Priatna in the women's road race.