Daily Times

LAHORE: The flame for the 18th Asian Games arrived in Indonesia with military precision on Tuesday morning at the Indonesian Air Force base of Adisutjipto Airport in Yogyakarta, Central Java. “The Indonesian Air Force Boeing jet, escorted by five Golden Eagle fighters in formation, touched down exactly at the scheduled time of 8:00 am to bring the Asian Games flame back from New Delhi, India, ready to start the Torch Relay on Thursday,” said a media release of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) on Tuesday. The flame was carried off the plane by Indonesia’s Torch Ambassador Susy Susanti, the 1992 Olympic Games badminton champion, and was greeted by a group of VIPs led by the Governor of Yogyakarta, Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, and the President of the Asian Games organising committee, Erick Thohir.

The ceremony included a dragon dance, a traditional Yogyakarta welcoming dance by eight performers, a paragliding show, gun salute, military band and a fly past by the Indonesian Air Force’s acrobatics fighter jet squadron. “I think it is good to have this kind of ceremony to light up the atmosphere and the awareness of the people,” said Thohir. “The Games will be starting soon and then the Torch Relay will be starting in the next two days. We chose Yogyakarta because it is a city with a lot of history, one of the Kingdoms in Indonesia, and also at the same time it is famous as a city of tourism. “We have the Borobudur Temple, one of the seven wonders, so I think it is good to start from here. It is good also that the government of Yogyakarta fully supports the event, and the Indonesian Air Force is supporting the Torch Relay by providing not only the plane but also the army to look after all the travel around Indonesia. We are going to travel 18,000km and it is not easy.”

The flame for the 18th Asian Games was lit on Sunday at New Delhi – host city of the Olympic Council of Asia’s first Asian Games in 1951. The 18th edition will run from August 18 to September 2 with 40 sports, 67 disciplines and 465 events and will be co-hosted by Jakarta and Palembang, capital of South Sumatra province. Now the FIFA World Cup is over, Thohir feels the Indonesian people are ready to turn their attentions to the Asian Games. “When the Torch Relay is happening, I think now many of the people are excited already – it is coming at the right time,” he said. After a concert at the Prambanan Hindu Temple on Wednesday, the Torch Relay will start on Thursday with the first leg from Yogyakarta to Solo. In total it will travel through 54 cities in 18 provinces of the vast archipelago of Indonesia.

Published in Daily Times, July 18^th 2018.