Jakarta - Indonesia will be relying on Angel Magdalena Ticoalu and Ricky to grab gold medals again from billiard event at the coming Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games), a spokesman said.
"The two men`s and women`s national billiard players still continued performing maximally at national or international championships," the secretary general of the All Indonesia Billiard Association (PB POBSI), Soedarjanto, said here on Sunday.
To achieve all the targets PB POBSI has given periodic tests since August 2011 to 20 billiard players consisting of 16 men`s and four women`s players.
Through intensive training in pool, snooker, carom and English billiard PB POBSI is optimistic its athletes could win gold medals in the pool and carom events.
He said it was not impossible for other players besides Angel and Ricky to also be able to win gold medals. What is important however is the national team would be able to maintain the tradition of winning gold medals in the event, he said.
When playing at home, Soedarjanto said, athletes are more challenged to present their best performance and with support from home spectators opponents are usually a bit nervous.
He said national players also often face such non-technical factors when playing at international events. He referred to Ricky Yang as an example whose performance dropped at the 25th SEA Games in Laos in 2009 after winning a world champion title in the Philippines.
Soedarjanto hoped that this would not happen when Ricky and Angie played at the 26th SEA Game multi-events in Jakarta and Palembang in November.
He admitted, however, Thailand and the Philippines would remain the strong opponents in the 26th SEA Games in November.(*) ANT/H-YH/S012
Source: http://www.antaranews.com