Jakarta. The Indonesian Cycling Federation, or ISSI, is close to forming the so-called National Team Body, or BTN – a special department to support national athletes success in next year's Asian Games.

The ISSI saw the need to create BTN after a chaotic management in the 2017 SEA Games, which resulted in Indonesia winning only two gold medals and ranking third out of all competitors.

"One of BTN's functions is to look for funds from the private sector, in addition to government money. All is intended to support cyclists to win medals," ISSI chairman Raja Sapta Oktohari said in Jakarta on Sunday (10/09).

ISSI failed to hold a training camp abroad ahead of the 2017 SEA Games, which Raja said was due to insufficient funding.

"We no longer want the national cycling teams to rely only on government bureaucratic mechanisms to get funds," he said.

"We want our try-out and training camp programs to be realized [...] BTN would anticipate that issue," he added.

BTN would be headed by a "director" and helped by several managers.

"We want to deliberately appoint some managers, because at the 2017 SEA Games in Malaysia we only had a manager who struggled to handle everything," he said.

Raja claimed that ISSI's manager at the time, Budi Saputra, will be appointed as BTN's first director. In Raja's view, Budi is capable enough to direct the new body due to the vast network he has outside of the federation.

"While for the managers, we've got some names from the communities, and people who are serious enough within cycling organizations," he said.