Jakarta: With this year’s World Badminton Championships on the way, host city Jakarta is preparing to welcome the world’s best shuttlers to compete from Aug. 10-16.
On Wednesday, representatives from the Badminton World Federation inspected Gelora Bung Karno Istora in South Jakarta, which will serve as the host venue.
“This is our first site visit in terms of production meetings for the World Championships which is in Jakarta this August,” BWF event director Darren Parks said during the visit.
“We will also have a couple of follow-up meetings. There’s a lot of work we need to do for the World Championships behind the scenes. We’re very lucky that PBSI [the national badminton body] and the organizing committee are very experienced in organizing such events. We’re running the best tournament of the year,” Parks said.
“The main challenge to be organized here is you’ve got quite old facilities. It’s one of the most iconic badminton venues, very famous for its great atmosphere and excitement generated here. But it gives organizers a lot of challenges because the infrastructures are quite old. They have to work quite hard to make it nice. They’re very experienced in doing that. So that’s what makes us confident that it’s going to be great.”
Bambang Roedyanto, the PBSI’s head of international relations, said the body and the event organizers needed to work harder to prepare for the Worlds meet.
“Maybe we have a lot of experience in staging a huge events like the Indonesia Open Superseries,” Bambang said. “But the World Championships requires more. For example, we need more rooms for the BWF delegates and sponsors during the championships. In the Superseries, there is only one TV court. But the BWF demands two TV courts from the very first day. It’s a huge challenge for us to manage the small space we have at Istora. We are now working on the layout,” Bambang said.
Still, Bambang said the PBSI and the organizers were excited for the challenge.
“We last held the World Championships a long time ago [in 1989]. So we should really work hard to succeed at this event.”
Jakarta hosted its first World Badminton Championships in 1980; that year, the country’s shuttlers took four out of five titles.
When the capital again hosted the tournament in 1989, Chinese players secured four out of the five titles.
Dimyati, an who manages the Gelora Bung Karno Sports Complex, said Istora’s renovations would start next month.
