Malaysia win 90 medals at Asean University Games

By LIM TEIK HUAT

PETALING JAYA: Hosts Malaysia succeeded in their mission to become overall champions for the first time in the Asean University Games, which ended yesterday.

Malaysia raked in a total medal haul of 90-78-47 after eight days of competitions to exceed their target of 80 gold medals.

While the statistics suggested a massive improvement, considering that the haul of 7-19-37 from the previous contingent for the Games in Vietnam in 2006, the haul is hardly worth gloating over considering the presence of a big number of national athletes in the fray.

There were even athletes who had competed in the Beijing Olympics four months earlier.

Record breaker: Swimmer Khoo Cai Lin shattered three national marks.

In athletics, Malaysia had Roslinda Samsu while archery had the likes of Cheng Chu Sian. Swimming had Daniel Bego and Khoo Cai Lin while taekwondo had Elaine Teo.

The swimmers provided the biggest buzz for Malaysia by not only delivering the biggest number of gold medals but the events were also won in Games record times.

And Cai Lin provided the icing on the cake by shattering three national marks, including the last of Nurul Huda Abdullah’s long-standing record which had stood for 20 years — in the 400m freestyle.

Junior Izzudin Abdul Rahim’s victory over national number one Chu Sian to take the men’s individual recurve title was also worth a mention.

But aside from the action on the pool and the unexpected upset in archery, there was no significant breakthroughs if one talks about uncovering the next generation of promising talent.

The powers-to-be should shoulder the blame for adopting a win at all costs attitude in the chase for medals.

For example, the rugby sevens competitions offered two gold medals — for the league and the championship.

Shooting was another big contributor of medals but the awarding of gold medals for team events in certain disciplines were jokes when Malaysia were the only ones in contention.

After swimming and shooting, athletics contributed the third highest number of nine gold medals.

But the standards were mediocre even by local standards while some events only had participants from one country.

For example, women’s hammer had two participants — both Malaysians. Women’s heptathlon had two Filipinas battling each other for the gold.

The Malaysian Universities Sports Council (Masum) were given a budget allocation of RM28 million by the Higher Education Ministry and the money was spent on preparing athletes, venues and other organisational requirements.