Legendary Susy Susanti insists all stakeholders to put Indonesian badminton back on track
Indonesia’s legendry former female player Susy Susanti qualms over the gradual decline of badminton in Indonesia and after shuttlers’ poor outing at London Olympics 2012, she wants Indonesian Badminton Association (PBSI), government and all other stake holders
to put things back on the right track.
The 41-year-old Susanti, who proved her worth in 1992 Barcelona Olympics and won Indonesia’s first gold medal, expressed her worries over the falling standard of badminton in the country and she wants Indonesia’s glorious days back.
Susanti also appreciated the great improvement made by Chinese shuttlers by expressing that they did not win any gold in 1992 Olympic Games but they proved their worth in 2000 Sydney Olympics when they grabbed four gold medals out of five and Indonesian
shuttlers could manage just one that came in Men’s Doubles category.
Tony Gunawan and Candra Wijaya won the gold medal for Indonesia in 2000 and since then the standard of Indonesian shuttlers has not been up to the mark to challenge the world.
While talking about the glorious past of Indonesian badminton, Susanti said that the glory has gone but now it is the time to realize the mistakes and to put the game on the right direction again.
She stated, “We’ve had our glory days, they’ve already passed. Now, we have to realize that we need to work really hard to fix things. To do that, we need to know why we lost and why we didn’t win a medal.”
The top Indonesian pair in Mixed Doubles category, Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir, also failed to win a medal as they could not deal with the pressure of mounting expectations.
Tontowi said, “I take this as a lesson that playing at the Olympics is very different from playing at other tournaments. The pressure is very high.”
It was the first time since badminton included in Olympic Games that Indonesia returned home empty handed as all of the shuttlers failed to win gold medal in any category of the sport.
Susanti wants everything back in order and insists all stakeholders to play their role in the promotion of the game in Indonesia before it becomes too late.
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