ONE suspects the Malaysia Games is fast losing is relevance and heading the way of the Sea Games, so why should it matter when a sport is excluded from the biennial Games?
In the pursuit of medals, basketball paid the price after it was excluded as Terengganu could not be bothered to set up a team, presumably because it did not stand a chance of winning.
Never mind that the Malaysian Basketball Association is one of the more professionally run national bodies in the country and deserved far better treatment.
But now that basketball is back for the next edition in Malacca in 2010, tennis has found itself out of the line up for reasons that hold little water.
But of course, to the Malaysia Games supreme council, ITF events are not up to Malaysia Games standard.
The supreme council felt that to build a new venue for tennis would not be prudent in the current economic climate.
That makes sense, if only Datuk Ab Karim Sulaiman, the Malacca sports, youth, unity and welfare committee chairman, had not said in August that the state government will be spending RM30-RM50 million in constructing new venues for lawn bowls, aquatics, equestrian, sailing and hockey.
While one understands the need for a hockey pitch and swimming pool, how can Malacca justify building a venue for equestrian, an elitist sport that consumes more money than any other, at tennis' expense?
Karim also added that of the 25 sports to be held, 18 are compulsory while the remaining seven -- basketball, boxing, equestrian, netball, petanque, silambam and table tennis -- were picked on the basis of Malacca standing a good chance of winning medals.
Now, if the Malaysia Games is to achieve its main aim of being a development platform for sports in the country, this cherry picking of sports to suit the hosts has got to stop.
Terengganu did it with canoeing and kayaking, where they swept 14 of 18 gold medals, and now will lose a whole lot of medals after the sport was dropped by Malacca.
And you must also be wondering what in the world are petanque and silambam doing in the Games?
The official line is that sports like silat, wushu and silambam were included for the sake of unity.
Well that is fine, but let me throw these names at you -- Jawariah Nordin, S. Theiviya, Duzbionjit Singh, Ahmad Deedat and Marcus Chee.
They are all aspiring and talented tennis juniors and you cannot find a sport more "majmuk" than tennis in the country as a unifying factor among the races. So how now supreme council members?
Taekwondo was also excluded but that has more to do with the farce that took place in Terengganu, following allegations of biased judging and fixed draws, and the Malaysian Taekwondo Association's (MTA) internal problems.
So if Sports Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob can say that taekwondo will be included in Malacca if the MTA can get its house in order, what was the Lawn Tennis Association of Malaysia's (LTAM) crime?
You are probably thinking I am being strongly biased towards tennis, but you're missing the point.
What is happening to tennis could happen to any sport if the supreme council or the hosts feels compelled to throw it out.
Like it or not, the Malaysia Games can make or break a sport at the grassroots level because every state sports council in the country is fixated on the Games.
If a particular sport is not in the Malaysia Games, its curtains where funding is concerned and the sport dies a slow death at state level.
Tennis will probably survive this exclusion but it is not a position other national sports associations would like to find themselves in.
The fact that tennis, canoeing and kayaking are Olympic sports did not matter to the supreme council either.
It is a sad state of affairs when certain sports can be dropped on a whim, without a care in the world to the consequences.
But that is the Malaysia Games for you.
Comments
Post a Comment