Indonesia Olympic Games is not about fleeting fame or money
We already expect great athletes to win, overcome adversity, preach preparation and all the hard work that is required to become a champion.
The wonder of sports to me comes in moments that are outside the limelight. When you see an athlete behave in a way that is not about fleeting fame or money. At Pekan Olahraga Nasional (PON) you see this when our athletes hug and congratulate each other after going to battle for 5 - 15 minutes or when they hang out for a drink later that night and reminisce on their fight.
Sports is about achieving greatness but more importantly it's about respecting others in THEIR pursuit of - or achievement of greatness. #RESPECT.
The #INDONESIA Olympic Games (better known as Pekan Olahraga Nasional #PON2016) is a massively multiplayer event wherein local champions from various province convene in a single geographic location to compete in a wide variety of mini-games within larger categories (aquatic, track, gymnastics, cycling, and others). Winners in each event acquire a gold medal. Second prize is a silver medal; third prize is a bronze medal. Fourth prize is the disappointment of everyone you love.
The 2016 Pekan Olahraga Nasional #JUDO in Bandung, West Java is over (followed by Indonesia Paralimpic Games in October #PEPARNAS2016). We won’t have another Pekan Olahraga Nasional until 2020. This means you have four years to decide if playing The Pekan Olahraga Nasional–as an athlete or invested audience member–is something you should consider.
Some set-up, for those of you who have not heard of the Pekan Olahraga Nasional (PON): each PON athlete represents a province. In order to achieve eligibility to compete in the Pekan Olahraga Nasional, players must first excel on local, and then national levels. This is a grueling process requiring training and obsession.
The training process of a PON athlete requires a custom-built lifestyle. To excel, these athletes must compete, train, and/or contemplate their sport every day of their lives. They must eat strict diets. They cannot ever lose grasp of their inspiration. This requires the nurturing of a trainer. Proud parents push children to succeed. The child evolves, Pokémon-like, into an athlete, who now requires an expert coach. The athlete evolves into a champion, who requires a champion’s coach. Next, the champion becomes National Team (TIMNAS), a representative of their nation and all their nation’s patriots. The National team goes to the SEA Games, Asian Games, Olympic and then stands a slim chance of becoming a medalist: one of the three best in the world during this four-year cycle of human history.
“Everyone has the fire, but the champions know when to ignite the spark.”
The Pekan Olahraga Nasional favor players with access to great resources. The larger a conglomeration of such persons your locality possesses, the healthier the competition. Healthy competition pushes an athlete to be better. It’s harder to compete if your province isn’t rich.
The Pekan Olahraga Nasional also places a historical framework of measurement on the limits of the human bodies which we are all trapped in all day every day even when the Pekan Olahraga Nasional are not airing on television. They give us something to compare ourselves to, and we’re weirdly proud of ourselves even if we can’t compare.
Two representative Judoka shows their best technique
THE GRAPHICS
The Pekan Olahraga Nasional (PON) present a neutral place for all province to participate in contests whose rules are objective and fair. This presents a major challenge to an art director: the arenas, venues, typography, logos, and trademarks must be culturally neutral, yet not at the expense of timeliness and taste. They must incorporate the flavor of the host city, though not to a degree which alienates other cultures.
The graphics of the Pekan Olahraga Nasional must present neutrality, balance, and majesty. It’s perhaps the majesty that is the most important: the Pekan Olahraga Nasional must look big. This bigness in juxtaposition with the rarity of the event (every four years), inflates the omni-cultural worth of the gold medal. Yes, the proper artistic treatment can make a piece of gold worth infinitely more than its weight in gold. With each event already pregnant with the moment, the history, and the spectacle, the Pekan Olahraga Nasional goes one step further with yet another great feature: all-time leader boards. Every so often, someone is going to break a national record. Thanks to our modern technology, television broadcasts of the Pekan Olahraga Nasional can represent the national record as a visible graphic. If the winner is winning hard enough, the game offers us spectators an opportunity to cheer on something else. This modern user experience innovation was quite useful at the 2016 Pekan Olahraga Nasional in West Java whenever.
Beyond the networking, I know that what binds us all together is a shared passion, love, and belief in the values of martial arts. Those values are at the very core of everything that is done in the world of martial arts and represent loyalty, dedication, hard work, humility, and respect - Values that we all share.