KONI Partners with South Korea Ahead of Asian Games

Jakarta, MINA – The Indonesian Sports Committee (KONI) has partnered with professionals from South Korea to train and assist Indonesian athletes ahead of the 2018 Asian Games, an official said here, Tuesday.

“The partnership is aimed at achieving our goal of collecting as many medals as possible during the upcoming Asian Games,” KONI Chairman Tono Suratman said in a written statement received by ANTARA in Jakarta.

Suratman stated that, along with other officials, he visited South Korea to ink the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on an athlete training program with Chungcheongbuk-do Governor Si Jong Lee.

The committee, he added, also visited the National Training Center in Jincheon.

Dubbed as the largest training center in the world, the venue is designed to accommodate some 1,150 athletes in 37 sports categories, Suratman noted. The training center, he added, is also supported by indoor and outdoor facilities, as well as sport science and medicine units.

Ahead of the multi-sports event, the sports committee will send several athletes in the disciplines of taekwondo, badminton, athletics, fencing and swimming to the training center.

“We will contact our counterparts in South Korea to discuss the implementation of the MoU,” he remarked.

Apart from the partnership, Indonesia has been offered the opportunity to host the Martial Art Championship in 2021 by Si Jong Lee, who is also the president of World Martial Art Mastership Committee.

Scheduled to be held from August 18 to September 2, the 2018 Asian Games will be hosted in two cities, Jakarta and Palembang.

The Indonesian Asian Games Organizing Committee hosted the trials in several sports categories, including for basketball, taekwondo, and Pencak Silat this month.

For Pencak Silat alone, some 91 athletes from 10 countries have participated in the tryouts, or the 18th Asian Games Invitation Tournament in Jakarta. (T/RS5/RS1)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)