5 ways you can be a successful Malaysian athlete

For many of us, we have at least once in our lifetime dreamed of becoming a great athlete. The fame, the money, making your country (or parents if you’re not so patriotic) proud, can chill by the time you reach 35-ish, and did we mention money?

If we haven’t said it yet, money is a big plus for athletes who’ve really made it to the top la. Take a look at some of our nation’s most successful athletes, and how much they earn. In addition to their hefty monthly salaries and tournament prize money, there are also numerous sponsorship deals, not to mention fame and recognition everywhere they go.

• Lee Chong Wei has a net worth of USD35 million(!!)
• Nicol David’s tournament and sponsorships alone amount to some RM 1.4 million.
• Safee Sali makes RM90,000 a month!

(BTW if you’re into badminton, the Malaysian Masters 2016 is happening right now. (At time of writing, our own Lee Chong Wei has made it to the quarter finals! Woo!)

And for some of us, even though we didn’t get to become athletes, surely we can live out our dreams through our children right?? But…the next question is…. how does one prepare one’s offspring to be a national sports hero? Well, we take some real-life lessons from Malaysians, and prepared this handy guide for ugaiz!  😀

 

1. Avoid sports with skimpy outfits.

One would be wise to avoid sports which requires short and tight clothes. (Or at least outfits which are deemed skimpy by our very progressive countrymen.) Why? Very simple, we answer with example. Remember the infamous Farah Ann Abdul Hadi “aurat” incident? A quick refresher for our readers with really short memories:

Farah Ann Abdul Hadi is a 21-year old Malaysian gymnast. She won the gold medal for floor gymnastics at this year’s SEA Games in June.

…and was promptly criticised by netizens for showing too much skin, like so:

“Even if you do not want to wear the tudung, wear a pair of tights so that your thighs are covered, aurat should be covered and not be exposed to men, well, whatever… congratulations on getting the gold medal for the country” – Facebook User Shinagawa Ann, published on themalaysianinsider

Though several influential figures such as KJ and Rafidah have spoken up in defense of Farah, it’s worth noting that there are still many folks among us who are more on the conservative side.

And also not forgetting the Sarong Gate incidents, which we’ve covered here previously. Maybe that’s why even our footballer’s pants have been getting longer over the years.

 

2. Choose a sport that our gomen invests in.

Our magic formula:

The more a sport is played at grassroots level + the more popular a sport is + the more past successes we’ve had = amount of gomen investment*

*not an actual formula

Think about the sports you grew up playing in school. Chances are, many more readers would have played football or badminton during Pendidikan Jasmani as compared to tennis or rugby. And naturally so because generation after generation grew up playing these sports (so higher interest in them). To put things into perspective, a single Malaysian Super League match can attract up to 1.2 million viewers, and professional leagues like the badminton Purple League can offer young athletes a chance to make a real living playing professional sports. They can also earn a decent salary even if they don’t make it to the national team.

So without further ado, here are the sports that PM Najib said the gomen would focus on:

“Bola sepak, lumba basikal, badminton, sepak takraw, renang dan olahraga diiktiraf sebagai enam bidang sukan utama yang mendapat tumpuan kerajaan dalam pembentangan Bajet 2015 semalam.” – Sos: kosmo.com.my

World-class athletes such as Lee Chong Wei and Josiah Ng are products of years of investment behind their respective sports of badminton and cycling, but we’ve yet to have much success in curling, for example.

So there you have it folks! If you want your kid to have the best chance of success, choose a popular sport where we have already enjoyed some success, an existing league system, and gomen investment behind it. (Unless you are super rich and can afford to hire a very expensive tennis/golf coach. Then we want to tumpang lessons for free also can?)

3. Don’t take any herbal medicine.

We Asians love our herbal medicine. You can practically find a chinese medical shop (or “zhong yok dim” in Cantonese) in almost every other shoplot area in Malaysia. Also, we’re willing to bet your grandmas/aunties will claim that some herb/root/ginseng powder or other has some kind of magical properties which will turn your kid into the next Cristiano Ronaldo. But before you pay your local sifu a visit… remember..

Herbal medicines may contain steroids. Jeng jeng jeng!

We’ve covered this before here, but for the TL;DR version: Lee Chong Wei failed a doping test due to some dexathasone dexamethoson dexamethasone that was found in his system. More commonly known as cordyceps, the drug was reportedly given to Datuk Lee by the wife of a very influential man. For failing the test, he was banned by the BWF for 8 months, so dun play-play.

Of course, our beloved hero made a comeback and even proceeded to steamroll his old nemesis en route to winning the China and Hong Kong Opens, so all’s well that ends well!

But this provides an important lesson for all of us: Make sure you know what a supplement contains before taking it!

 

4. Practice in the worst courts possible.

In real life, the idea of intentionally making one’s training harder is nothing new. For example, ankle weights and oxygen deprivation training masks (whaat..?).

In this aspect, Malaysia has one incredible edge over other countries: Terrible football pitches.

And we even do it on a national level too! The appalling condition of the Bukit Jalil National Stadium pitch is something that is well-documented, with stadium staff claiming that concerts and other non-sporting related events are to blame.

“Berdasarkan gambar dan maklumat yang saya terima, keadaan padang amat teruk. Kami telah melakukan persiapan dengan baik tetapi keadaan padang yang teruk amat mengecewakan.” – Bojan Hodak, former JDT coach on the Bukit Jalil field on mstar.com.my 

But we think that it’s actually a secret ploy to create the worst conditions possible for our players, so that when they go for international tournaments on decent pitches, it’s like running on clouds for them! So let your kid practice in the worst fields/courts possible. If they manage to avoid injury (survival of the fittest right?), they will be unstoppable when they get to the proper courts.

 

5. Erm.. get used to defeat?

Congratulations! Your son/daughter has survived lousy training conditions, avoided any unknown herbs, and worn the appropriate amounts of clothing throughout his/her junior tournaments. Now they’ve just turned 18 and are about to represent Malaysia in an international tournament! The final step is to….well, get used to not getting to the finals in a sense.

Unfortunately, our national football team hasn’t been doing much winning lately, and recently suffered our all-time record worst defeat against UAE, letting in 10 goals while scoring a grand total of……….zero. This even inspired several memes, and an article on our part.

And… heartbreaking as it may be, Lee Chong Wei has had to endure defeat on many, many occasions. Who doesn’t remember rooting for him during the Olympics and Badminton World Championships? Sadly.. the pictures below speak for themselves.

 

Walaooo.. why so negative? Our sports so bad meh?

Well, it’s not like we’re the worst in the world when it comes to sports la. During the 2012 Summer Olympics, Malaysia won 1 Silver and 1 Bronze medal. While that may not look like a lot, it’s 2 medals more than 122 other countries that didn’t win any medal at all (204 nations participated).

And it’s not like we’re not proud of what our national heroes have achieved. They really have done massively to make us proud.

But maybe it’s fair to say that we can do better? Here’s why.

During the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Malaysia finished in 12th place.  1 place behind Singapore. The Malaysian Insider reports that it was actually the first time we ever finished below Singapore in a Commonwealth Games. Youth and Sports Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin also said that we actually missed our medal target for that games, and even missed our target for the Asian Games. And he adds that these target were already quite low!

This article also brought up the possibility of politics ruining the sports in our country, saying that while we do have potential athletes, many end up not pursuing a career in certain sports because they believe there is no future in them.

“Minnow sports like archery, fencing, judo are struggling to remain afloat and crying out loud for lack of funds.” – Columnist Vignesh Kumar, in an article for Free Malaysia Today

He also adds the issue of developing talent from rural areas because they just don’t have the chance to play sports like bowling, tennis, or squash. Which is why he concludes that if we want to do better in sports, we should learn to be more inclusive and get our priorities right, even if it means that all the advice we just gave you becomes useless in the long run.

“Sports should be for all and not the selected few!” – Columnist Vignesh Kumar, in an article for Free Malaysia Today

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Contributing writer: Johannan Sim