Jakarta. Banda Aceh’s Harapan Bangsa stadium is gearing up to hold the opening ceremony for the 2024 National Sports Week (PON) on Monday night.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has also headed to Aceh to kick off the ceremony of the multi-sport event. Sports Minister Dito Ariotedjo recently said that everything had gone according to plan.  

“The preparations [for the ceremony] are all on target,” Dito said over the weekend.

The government has also got everything ready for the upcoming matches, Dito said. Some games had already started prior to the opening ceremony. For instance, Rizki Juniansyah even broke several national records when he secured gold for the men’s 89-kilogram weight lifting class on Saturday. 

PON is a quadrennial event that brings together athletes from across the Indonesian archipelago to face one another. But what makes this year’s event special is because for the first time, PON takes place in two provinces at once: namely Aceh and North Sumatra. Since being appointed as hosts, both provinces had also witnessed changes in governorship. This became a challenge for PON.

“But thanks to the great teamwork and communication, we were able to overcome the challenges of hosting PON in two different provinces. We were able to achieve all targets,” Dito said.

PON is set to take place on September 9-20, although some sports have already taken place since August. The early start was due to the fact that a number of sports would need to take more time. Some sports will also have to share their venue. There are 65 sports in this year’s PON. Almost 13,000 athletes are competing in the event.