Caterpillar Crisis Won’t Keep Indonesia’s Skateboarders From Asian Games Gold
Indonesia’s national skateboarding team has suffered a training crisis in the leadup to the Asian Games: an uncomfortable rash caused by a caterpillar infestation at the training venue.
“There’s a lot of rambutan trees so there’s lots of caterpillars,” veteran skater Pevi Permana said.
“When the wind blows the hairs of the caterpillars are carried by the wind and get onto our skin and we get all itchy.
“It was super itchy — I’ve got red bumps all over me and my skin had to be medicated.”
It is so bad the team has shifted to a new venue in outer Jakarta — but the caterpillar crisis is just one of many problems facing host nation Indonesia ahead of the Asian Games in August.
Plenty of venues in the host cities of Jakarta and Palembang in South Sumatra are not finished: the velodrome, the horse riding facilities, the squash venue, four soccer stadiums in West Java, the roller skating rink and the light rail in Palembang that is supposed to get tourists to the venues.
President Joko Widodo has told the organisers to get a move on.
The Sports Ministry’s Gatot Dewabroto told the ABC he is confident everything will be ready on time.
There remains a fair amount of concern though about getting competitors 17 kilometres from the athletes’ village to the venues. Jakarta’s roads are awful and the traffic is apocalyptic.
Authorities say they will provide police escorts to push through the congestion, and they are planning on reducing traffic by ordering local schools to close for the duration of the Games.
Mr Dewabroto says the students will study from home under a scheme they are calling “long distance education”.
The Games also fall during Eid al-Adha — an Islamic festival that involves livestock for sale on the city streets which are inspected and bought so they can be donated to the city’s poor.
The cattle and goats are normally slaughtered at local mosques before the meat is handed out.
It is a pretty challenging sight for tourists and athletes and there is a risk the blood and smell will upset the equestrian competitors’ horses.
The Sports Ministry says it has shifted some saleyards and asked mosques around the venues to consider doing the slaughter somewhere else.
Skaters Out to Prove Indonesia Can Get a Gold Medal
Aside from avoiding the caterpillars, the skateboarders are staying away from logistical concerns.
They are trying to stay focused on their training schedule.
“I’m going to prove that Indonesia can get a gold medal,” said Permana, who is one of his nation’s few professional skaters.
“I used to think that skateboarding was only suitable for people from overseas. Especially for Americans because it’s from there. But then I found out that there were a lot of Asians joining the international competitions as well so that inspired me.”
“It’s just about how I train consistently so I can be equal to those Americans or Europeans.”
The training session we watched begins in the late afternoon — when Jakarta’s scorching heat has softened slightly.
As dusk approaches it is an intoxicating scene at the park, where there is a soundtrack of the call to prayer and the backdrop includes the minaret of the local mosque as well as huge tropical thunderheads building to the west.
Smoke from burning rubbish wafts across the park, giving the whole scene a kind of cinematic filter.
If only you did not have to breathe it in.
The squad are all soaked with sweat as they push themselves in their new venue.
One of the team’s younger members, 20-year-old Aldy Agustiano, already has a list of injuries that would compare with that of a veteran AFL ruckman.
“I’ve got four stitches under my left eye. I broke my left pinky finger. I’ve got five stitches here,” he said, pointing to his finger.
“Of course there’s my ankle — every skateboarder would have this — my left ankle was fractured. The back of my head was wounded and on my left shoulder, the ligament was broken.”
Courtesy : abc.net.au
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