The agony of Malaysian Athlete
“If you want your association to secure strong support and funding, you have to do what you are supposed to do as an athlete. “We must not be defeatists,” she said. “We are also from Asia. If the Indonesians and Thais can win Olympic gold medals, there is no reason why we can't. We are of the same physical size and take the same food.” “If you do well, you will make the country feel proud of you. If you do badly, it reflects on the country's good name,” she said, adding that they should also win for former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. “Tun Mahathir wanted to build the best and most modern sports stadiums because he saw sport as a means of uniting the rakyat.” -www.thestar.com.my 29th July 2004-
These are the words from Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Azalina Othman Said, at the flag-handling over ceremony for the Malaysian athletes (participants in the Athens 2004 Olympics). Seriously, what was she thinking? giving out such speech to the people who actually put in endless efforts and time, just to represent our country in the world class event?
If you are a Malaysian, having an exceptional performance in sports doesn’t guarantee a good career. Support and funding of the government are limited, and is no easy task to look for sponsors from the private sector. That may be the reason why every Malaysian sportsman/woman are having such a hard time on deciding turning full time professional, or just live on as a working class. Malaysian government didn’t attempt to discover any young talent either, judging from the lack of investment in sports school. In fact, the only available sports school (that I know off), is the one in Bukit Jalil (which doesn’t even have a fully functional website). Sports event among local universities or higher education centre are worse, they don’t even have the committee/association to organize some sort of events or whatsoever.
In such situation, is no surprise that Malaysia is lacking of young talented sports celebrity. Parents (especially Chinese) normally discourage their children to participate in sports, no matter how gifted they are. That is comprehensible, seeing the difference of salary between athletes and white collar class. Notice that most of the outstanding Malaysian Athletes comes from a wealthy (or at least medium class) background, which have the financial status to go through all the training and event registration fees. (Including the air ticket or accommodation for international events)
The media isn’t helping much as well. Coverage for the newspaper sports section are always reserved with foreign sports events (EPL, NBA and etc), we seldom read any reports or news for our own country’s sportsman. The critics are always on “Malaysian players can’t perform well”, or “Malaysian players lack motivations”, while there were no sign of support or encouragement from the public. Yet when one of the Malaysian athletes win a major event, all of the sudden everyone seems to focus on his/her life for being success, and everybody wants a piece of him/her achievement. Yes, Malaysian government does not contribute, but eagerly waiting for someone’s victory just so we can brag about it. Same theory applies for local artist/performer. When jazz artists request for supports or funding, no one gives a damn, or some even say “We do not encourage western music”, but when Guy Sebastian won the Australian Idol, we were so proud of him because he was born in Malaysia. What kind of sorry ass shit is that?
Is hard enough to gain support from your family and society, now the government is threatening on funding cut? If an athletes do badly in sports event, that will reflects his/her country’s good name? What the hell are you trying to say, minister? These athletes who is going to represent our country in the Olympics worked their asses off to qualify the events, is that how we reward them? Personally I don’t think they will be worrying about their physical size or the food they eat, more like they are tormenting on what the public’s responds will be if they do not present well in the Olympics. Thanks to the stupidity of our Youth and Sports minister, their spirits must have been “greatly” lifted up and will definitely put in their best to make their country (which is not quite supportive) proud. Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad build the modern stadium because he sense the obligate to build it, Malaysian needs it, because we are lack of facilities to train and to produce quality athletes.
Our society always complains about talented people leaving the country, not being patriotic and such. Maybe we should put ourself in their shoes and try to understand the situation. Being proud to be a Malaysian is one thing, taking the risk of failing all by yourself is a different story. Who would want to stay in a country that ignores the talented, tight-fisted on giving out support, but take the credits from those who achieved victory?