Overreliance on old athletes hampering Malaysia's gold quest - Sports pundit

KUALA LUMPUR - Dependence on old athletes is one of the reasons Malaysia has yet to win its first gold medal at the Olympic Games, local sports pundit Asan Ahmad said.

He said that the script has remained unchanged as the national contingent was banking on ‘old horses’ for gold at the Paris Olympics and asserted that the associations needed to create a programme capable of nurturing new talents in their respective sports to change the scenario.

"In my opinion, we have still failed to win gold at the Olympics because we failed to nurture new athletes with the potential to contribute gold medals and we’re relying on old athletes for medals.

"You can imagine an athlete like Datuk Mohd Azizulhasni Awang, who is getting on in age, still being entrusted to compete at the Olympics. There’s nothing wrong in listing him, but he should be accompanied by juniors.

"Where are our backup athletes and this shows the weakness of association programmes to nurture talented athletes. We cannot rely on Azizulhasni forever. There needs to be more juniors.

"Another reason we failed to bring the gold back is that we entrust the same people who fail to bring the sport to a higher level at the previous event and also the associations they lead.

"We must take the right person to do the right things. If we take the wrong person, we will keep on repeating the wrong things,” he told Bernama, adding that it was time for leaders of sports associations that failed at the Olympics to allow new faces to lead them," he said.

Meanwhile, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Shah Alam, Sports Science and Recreation Faculty senior lecturer Mohd Sadek Mustafa said it was time for Malaysia to explore other sports and not only focus on those that were popular.

The local sports observer pointed out that Malaysia needed to be like neighbouring Indonesia, which broke away from sports that traditionally provided Olympic gold medals like badminton by winning the gold medal in wall climbing and weightlifting at the recent Paris Olympics.

"We don’t need to look far, just make Indonesia an example. They didn’t win any gold in badminton at this (year’s) Olympics but in weightlifting and wall climbing.

"We can also explore other gold medal potential sports like canoeing and kayaking as we have talented athletes and good facilities. These sports aren’t focused on physical aspects but on sports equipment technology,” he added.

Malaysia managed to secure two bronze medals in badminton through national men’s singles player Lee Zii Jia and national men’s doubles pair Aaron chia-Soh Wooi Yik at the recently-concluded Paris Olympics, a less than satisfactory showing when compared to the one silver and one bronze through keirin cycling and badminton in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. - BERNAMA