VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The Indonesian Olympic Committee (KOI) has said it is ready to increase the number of Indonesian referees and juries in measureless sports branches such as martial arts.

KOI secretary-general and chef de mission (CdM) of the Indonesian contingent, Ferry J. Kono, said the step is in response to the poor results of Indonesian martial arts athletes at the 2021 Vietnam SEA Games.

"We are ready to facilitate if there are eligible Indonesian juries/referees, such as lodging to flight tickets," Kono informed in Hanoi on Tuesday.

This is one way to ensure sportsmanship in the matches of Indonesian athletes, he said.

"Through this effort, we hope that non-technical issues in the arena will not happen again," Kono added.

Earlier, several martial arts sports teams had complained about referees favoring Vietnamese athletes.

They said that Indonesian athletes who should have bagged medals in such events as pencak silat, judo and karate matches lost in the semi-finals and finals.   

Indonesia's judo head coach Siti Aminah said her team deeply felt the juries' partisanship in the men's Kodokan Goshin Jutsu.

The defeat of Indonesian judo pair Endro-Kevin Sanadi Aprilion was quite surprising because, based on the live footage of their match on YouTube, the two did not make a mistake, she added.

The pair's movements were almost perfect, even some judo masters from Japan said that both of them deserved gold, she remarked.

However, surprisingly, Aminah said, the pair only gained 479 points, placing in the bottom two out of a total of five participants in Group A.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese pairs Tran Quoc Cuong-Phan Minh Hanh (Group A) and Nguyen Cuong Thinh-Ha Minh Duc (Group B) won the gold and silver medals, while the bronze medal was won by Laotian pair Chansy Viengvilay-Syvanvilay Chindavone.

"It is obvious that the athletes are very sad, even from Youtube, the Indonesian pair did not make mistakes at all," Aminah said. (Antaranews)