Asia's biggest multisport event, attracting more than 10,000 athletes from across the continent and offshore islands, got underway Saturday for two weeks of competition in 40 sports ranging from the mainstream to the esoteric.
The 18th edition of the Asian Games, running through Sept. 2, will be an important proving ground for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, a chance for Indonesia to show it can host a major sporting event and a special occasion for North Korea and South Korea to demonstrate their detente.
Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, who runs for a second term next April, attended a ceremony at Jakarta's Gelora Bung Karno Stadium to declare the games open. It was a day after the world's fourth-most populous country with more than 300 ethnic groups and 17,000 islands, extending along the equator as far as 5,000 km, marked the 73rd anniversary of its independence.