Fix the Sports Development Strategy

Winning at the highest competitive level, such as the Olympics, must form the foundation of the sports development strategy, especially to overcome budgetary limitations.

KOMPAS/RONY ARIYANTO NUGROHO

Athletes of the Indonesian contingent gather at the inauguration of the Indonesian team for the 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the Philippines in the Bung Karno Basketball Hall, Jakarta, Wednesday (27/11/2019). The ceremony was led by Youth and Sports Minister Zainudin Amali. The Indonesian contingent will send 1,311 people, including 841 athletes, 415 officials and 55 additional members. In the 2019 SEA Games, Indonesia will compete in 52 sports

JAKARTA, KOMPAS – The awareness to use the South East Asian (SEA) Games as a stepping-stone towards higher achievements at the Asian Games and the Olympics must be followed up with the development of a proper sports development strategy. A blueprint for sports development is thus needed to determine its long-term priorities, especially with regard to overcoming the budgetary limitations for national training camps (pelatnas).

Allocating the pelatnas budget using the cluster approach is a viable option for recognizing the achievements of particular sports associations. However, this can affect the effectiveness of the training camps. Those sports in lower clusters that have no other funding sources may only have budgets large enough to cover a two- to three-month pelatnas.

Starting this year, the Youth and Sports Ministry has divided national sports into four clusters for distributing pelatnas funding. The first cluster comprises Olympic medal sports, badminton and weightlifting. The second cluster comprises sports that won gold medals at the 2018 Asian Games, which includes rowing and taekwondo. The third cluster is made up of the 10 sports that won gold at the SEA Games, including swimming, gymnastics, athletics and archery. The remaining 33 sports comprise the fourth cluster.

“These groups have been formed to regulate budgetary allocations. Those in the first cluster receive more money than those in the second, third and fourth clusters. This is fair in light of the ministry’s limitations,” Youth and Sports Ministry secretary Gatot S. Dewa Broto said over the weekend in Jakarta.

These groups have been formed to regulate budgetary allocations.

The groupings enable cluster 1 sports associations to hold a yearlong pelatnas. However, most sport associations are only able to begin training for the SEA Games mid-year. Meanwhile, some sport associations only hold two-month training camps. It is difficult to expect any achievements if the pelatnas period does not correspond with the training needs of the athletes.

This is evident in rowing, for instance, which has a Rp 12 billion (US$851,412) budget for June-December 2019. However, because its pelatnas began early in the year, the fund was used to cover the needs of its athletes and coaches in January-July 2019.

KOMPAS/RONY ARIYANTO NUGROHO

Athletes of the Indonesian contingent gather at the inauguration of the Indonesian team for the 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the Philippines in the Bung Karno Basketball Hall, Jakarta, Wednesday (27/11/2019). The ceremony was led by Youth and Sports Minister Zainudin Amali. The Indonesian contingent will send 1,311 people, including 841 athletes, 415 officials and 55 additional members. In the 2019 SEA Games, Indonesia will compete in 52 sports.

Rowing head coach Muhammad Hadris said that training camps must begin early in the year without delay, as rowers needed train continuously. The sport relied on physical strength and rowers must redouble their efforts to rebuild their endurance if their training was disrupted.

Meanwhile, baseball and softball allow their athletes train in their regions of origin and only call them to Jakarta for competitions. The sports’ managers contribute to raising funds for their pelatnas, which began in September.

Role of private sector

The head of the Indonesian 2019 SEA Games contingent, Harry Warganegara, said that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private companies should help cover the government’s shortfall in financing the training camps, and stressed that the government should be involved at every training level. “However, the reality is so distance from the ideal, as the government has a limited budget,” he said.

The gap between the ideal and real conditions could be narrowed if the private sector and SOEs could contribute to athletes’ training. Forming a partnership between SOEs and sport associations was a possible solution. However, this would require amending the sports funding regulation.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

In a ceremony at Bogor Palace, West Java, Wednesday (27/11/2019), President Joko Widodo (left) hands over the red and white flag to the chairman of the Indonesian Olympic Committee, Raja Sapta Oktohari, as a symbol for the deployment of the Indonesian contingent to compete in the 30th 2019 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the Philippines. A total of 841 Indonesian athletes will compete at the 30th SEA Games in Manila. In his speech, the President asked all athletes to do their best to reach at least second place.

Sports observer Fritz Simanjuntak said that distributing the sports development budget through the cluster model was good, but it was not oriented correctly. The budgeting scheme divided sports associations based on short-term targets and was not oriented towards developing the sport for top-level competitions like the Olympics. “The scheme is good, but it will not accomplish anything in the long run,” said Fritz.

Without a clear plan, the cluster-based budgeting scheme would always be changing according to current achievements. The cluster scheme for the 2019 SEA Games, for instance, is based on the results of the 2018 Asian Games and the 2017 SEA Games, so the clusters would change for the 2020 SEA Games pelatnas allocations.

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Fritz said that this was the result of the absence of a blueprint that laid the foundational priorities for sports development. The blueprint was needed as a reference for improving the cluster-based budgeting scheme, as in countries with advanced sports development systems that prioritized sports with Olympic potential. “Without a blueprint, athlete development will forever be patchwork,” he said.

Gatot promised to find a better solution to alleviate the limited capacity of pelatnas at a meeting with eight relevant ministries following the SEA Games. Another viable option was sharing the burden of the pelatnas budget with the athletes’ home regions, particularly for the athlete’s salary.