Skip to main content

Shabery makes an impression in first visit to the NSC

KUALA LUMPUR: First impression, they say, always matters.

And the country’s new Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek certainly showed himself as a down-to-earth and hands-on Minister after his first official visit to the National Sports Council (NSC) in Bukit Jalil, the home of the national athletes and sports administrators, yesterday.

From his speech and his action, he showed that he had the interest of the national athletes close to his heart.

“Time and distance can be measured but not courage and determination. But that is what I see in the faces of the athletes here, and I will do all I can to help them achieve excellence for the country,” said Shabery to a thunderous applause from the national athletes and officials.

“Today, I have been given a red carpet welcome. Next time I intend to come here and listen to what the athletes have to say without having all these officials around. I am open to the athletes’ ideas and suggestions. I may even drop by and use the gymnasium here.”

Shabery also took time to visit some of the athletes in training yesterday, including those from weightlifting, archery, athletics, gymnastics, wushu and badminton.

He also shared with the athletes his three-pronged vision to strengthen Malaysian sports.

He aims to establish Malaysia as a sporting nation, to improve the nation’s medal tally in major sporting events and to turn sport into an industry.

“In future, I hope every Malaysian will be able to play at least one game. I hope many will be inspired to become like Lee Chong Wei or Nicol David or Shalin Zulkifli,” he said.

“We also want to improve our excellence in major tournaments. It is also my intention to make sport an industry. Rather than importing sporting goods from overseas, we can explore avenues to produce our very own. In future, there should be careers and job opportunities for people in sports.”

Shabery also said that he would look at successful sports models – like those in England, Australia and China – for Malaysia to emulate.

For now, Shabery plans to continue with the existing set-up in the Malaysian sport and not make changes just for the sake of changing.

Shabery has made a good start, let’s hope he will make a lasting impression.

The Star

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Malaysian junior athletes are just too ‘lembik’

Saya setuju. We are working on more coaches! “ @ManOlimpik : Malaysian junior athletes are just too ‘lembik’ http://t.co/7D7wmHWaNy ” — Khairy Jamaluddin (@Khairykj) June 10, 2014 The benchmark. Can our junior athletes train as hard as Malaysia's world No.1 badminton player, Lee Chong Wei? “IT IS okay lah. The training is not too bad lah. I will try lah … Wah, so hard lah today.” These are some of the common statements I hear from our juniors nowadays. It is not only in badminton. It is the easy-going, laid-back attitude and lack of competitiveness at grassroots level that we have problems producing quality players. I have travelled quite a bit. After ending my decade-long career with the national team, I went to play in the league in Europe. It’s different there. The European athletes know what they want. And they do it with real focus. Even the young ones possess admirable self-control and show a high level of commitment. During my time in the ...
12 comments
Read more

Organising Major Sports Events Can Inspire Sports Culture Among The People - Khairy

PUTRAJAYA, June 5 (Bernama) -- Organising major sports events can help inspire sports culture among the people and ensure a healthy lifestyle said Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin. Khairy said the Tour of Malaysia cycling race organised since 1963, for example, can encourage more people to take the sport in a more competitive way or just for recreation purposes. "A study carried out by a world renown medical journal, The Lancet, revealed that 61 percent of adults in Malaysia do not engage themselves in active sports. "A study by the Health Ministry revealed that only 25 percent of Malaysians exercise," he said in his speech when launching the 2013 Tour of Malaysia (Jelajah Malaysia) at the Youth and Sports Ministry, here, Wednesday. "Cycling, though not as popular here as in countries like Denmark, the activity is becoming popular among the people as can be seen through an increase in sale of bicycles for recreation," he sa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Badminton: Fans rooting for all-Malaysian semis

Reports: RAJES PAUL KUALA LUMPUR: The home fans will be rooting for an all-Malaysian men’s singles semi-final between Lee Chong Wei and Liew Daren. But Chong Wei is more fancied to advance than Daren in quarter-final matches against Indonesian Simon Santoso and Dane Peter Gade-Christensen respectively at the Putra Stadium in Bukit Jalil today. Yesterday, Chong Wei defeated Vietnamese Nguyen Tien Minh 21-9, 18-21, 21-7 in a second-round match that saw the world number one struggling to adapt to the draught in the stadium in the second game. And Daren continued a fairy tale run in his home Open, blowing away a toothless Hsueh Hsuan-yi of Taiwan 21-14, 21-12. Although Choong Wei had to slog for the win over Tien Minh, the top seed and defending champion felt that he was playing better by the day. “I got off to a good start but found it hard to cope with the draught. I tried to catch up after losing my momentum but that did not happen and I decided to conserve energy for ...
11 comments
Read more