So Malaysia failed to reach their SEA Games target of 70 gold medals and it is time to look for scapegoats and get heads rolling. Is that the way forward?
Two years ago, Malaysia did exactly what Philippines did by ensuring the Games was packed with events that favoured them over the rivals. Malaysia did go to Manila without the expectation of winning the overall title but to ensure the meager target was reached.
But, coming home with just 56 gold medals, 57 silvers and 71 bronze was not in the game plan, especially when Malaysia fielded the largest contingent behind the hosts. It could have been even lower had our rivals had opted to field their strongest in some of the events including badminton and athletics.
Malaysia’s medal haul was at a rate of only 23.83%, or at least seven out of every ten athletes failed to get up the podium in Manila. If this was a business, the entire management would have been booted out.
Only 18 of the 26 sports targetted to deliver gold managed to do cough up 50 gold medals while the remaining six were unexpected gold medals.
But success at the SEA Games should not be only about number of medals. Did we do well in the blue riband events – athletics and swimming – at the Games?
Malaysia managed only two gold medals out of the 38 medals at the pool, although we dominated the diving events. Phee Jinq En was the only Malaysian to break a Games record, recording 1:08.50 to erase the old record of 1:09.00 in the women’s 100m breaststroke.
In athletics, Malaysian won five of the 49 medals at stake, including a surprise win in the men’s 100m sprint. The spectacular 8.02 long jump silver from Andre Anura Anuar, a new national record, is also a worth performance.
Football may be the glamour sports, but until we do much better in this two marquee events, we cannot truly say we are a sporting power. Singapore, who finished just two gold behind Malaysia in the standing , won 23 events at the pool. It was almost half of their total medal haul.
Vietnam, who won ten at the pool, also took 16 gold medals in athletics to finish higher overall than Malaysia.
With more than 150 medals on offer in the martial arts events we won a paltry four in karate, two in silat and one each in muay and taekwondo.
Karate, nevertheless surprised with a strong showing, finishing tops in the competition. Karate together with diving (4), gymnastics (8), lawn bowls (4) and squash (4) were the better performers for the Malaysian contingent.
Badminton won three gold, but they were helped by both Thailand and Indonesia not fielding some of their top players.
In contrast bowling were targeted for five gold but only managed two. But this should not come as a shock as bowling as minute changes including lane set-up can change the entire scenario.
Excuses have been plenty – poor logistical support, typhoon, overconfidence, unfair judging, rule changes, unfamiliarity with new sports, schedule changes – have all been bandied around. However these are not new, except maybe the typhoon, in the SEA Games.
Getting into the blame game bandwagon is not going to increase the medal haul for Malaysia. Whether it is the Ministry of Sports, the National Sports Council (NSC) the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) the National Sports Associations (NSA), the coaches or the players, each of them have to shoulder the blame together.
There is no point in taking the path that the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) took in announcing the removal of Datuk Ong Kim Swee as the national coach, even before he has made the trip back to Kuala Lumpur or awaiting for his report on the teams failure to get past the group stages.
The first step, after the compulsory post mortem, that both the NSC and OCM must take is to review their selection process for the SEA Games as well as future multi-sports events.
The selection process has not been all that transparent, especially when sports like Underwater Hockey is given the go ahead without much fuss while some other main stream sports have to fight hard to include their athletes.
The current selection criteria, seems to have failed to ensure quality participation. Based on the selection criteria, athletes must have a personal best within the last 12 months and ranked top four in the region to qualify for category A and top eight for category B (self-funded). Category C is for newly introduced sports based on their achievements.
With some events attracting between just four and six entries, we should be looking to a much higher qualification criteria.
While the NSA’s have to take serious look at how they develop their own athletes, we must also look into how much of progress the regional rivals have made.
Even in gymnastics, where we dominated, Vietnam seems to be closing the gap. Just look at how we had lost our dominance in events like silat and sepak takraw in recent years.
While the Philippines dominated some of the newer events including skateboarding (6), obstacle race (6), arnis (14), dancesports (10), jiujitsu (5) and eSports (3), it was their all-around performance that gave them the overall title. Minus these events from the Games and they would still have finished tops.
Malaysia in contrast does not have the depth in a wider range of sports, to be serious contenders, unless we get to be hosts again.
This goes back to the basic problem with Malaysians, whom are more interested in glamour sports. And the government has not shown any different view by pumping in millions into football and recently to eSports.
If the trend of including more martial arts events at the Games continues, it is appropriate that Malaysia also pays more attention to martial arts like karate, taekwondo, sambo, kurash, judo, wrestling etc.
The SEA Games is the lowest ranked of all multi-sports events and perhaps instead of looking just into winning medals, we should also look to exposing our younger athletes.
But this is a catch-22 situation as Malaysians in general are almost always interested in only the hype of winning.
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