Among the blind, the squint rules

Petitions galore

2010-05-26T11:26:00.002+08:00

Malaysia is fast becoming the land of petitions. What was until a couple of days ago a domain of politics ha snow taken a step into sports.

I was amused by the news that a group of 200 people from a coalition of NGO's have sent in a petition demanding the resignation of the top management of the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM).

Just who are these NGO's was not revealed in the report although I heard a whisper that the whole thing was engineered by a former badminton player.

Anyway, I hope I can get the contact of this coalition as I have along list of other sports associations that also need their help.

1. The Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia for the failure of their players to win the Asian Championships despite having the world number one in the team.

2. The Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) for the failure of the team to qualify for the World Cup or the Olympics for umpteen years. And while we are at it can we also send a petition to the Johor FA (my home state team) for their failure to win the national league for so many years.

3. The Malaysian Hockey Federation (MHF) for the failure of the team to qualify for the World Cup and also winning the recent Sultan Azlan Shah Cup.

4. The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) for the failure of OCM to secure the 2013 IOC Congress despite having the PM as its "secret weapon".

5. The Malaysian Sepaktakraw Association for their failure to beat Thailand in so many internationals.

6. The Malaysian Floorball team for failing to qualify for the World Cup after losing all their matches in Singapore. (And they thought we do not know about it).

7....please feel free to add more

IOA versus Sports Ministry = Autonomy versus Sovereignty

2010-05-07T17:55:00.000+08:00

This is my new article on Sportskeeda.com

The ongoing battle between the Sports Ministry and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) over the limitation of tenure of sports leaders is going to be a historic chapter in modern sports.

This is a classic battle between the sovereignty of the Indian government and the notion of autonomy espoused by the Olympic Charter.

Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory. The Indian Parliament comprising of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha have every legal right to impose their authority in India.

They are also an autonomous in this regards, unlike a majority of the European countries that have ceded some of their rights as members of the European Union.

Autonomy is the ability to make your own decisions about what to do rather than being influenced by someone else or told what to do.

Read the entire article here.

In search of autonomy?

2010-04-09T13:07:00.002+08:00

It could be a case of protecting its autonomy or avoiding scrutiny. The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) has just taken the drastic step of declining any further financial assistance from the government.

The IOA secretary general Randhir Singh, in a letter to the government said: 'The autonomy of National Olympic Committee of India and the Indian Olympic Association is supreme. The IOA would like to desist from receiving any further financial support from the government from the financial year 2010-11.'

A number of other sports associations are also expected to follow suit in the coming weeks with similar stance.

The decision comes in the wake of the government decision to declare government declared all national sports federations receiving grant of Rs.10 lakh or more as a 'Public Authority' and under the RTI Act, 2005.

This would have meant that the IOA would have come under a more stringent audit scrutiny by the Indian government.

The IOA received approximately Rs 240 lakhs last year.

While the IOA have claimed that the decision was solely made to preserve their autonomy, the timing of their decision seems to indicate otherwise.

It came just a day after the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports issued an order asking all national sports federations to designate Central Public Information Officers and Appellate Authorities as required by the RTI Act.

Is the IOA hiding anything? It is something we can only speculate.

Whatever the reason, I find their decision to decline government money laudable.

Will the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) or any one national sports association react the same way?

Nah! I don't think so.

Nepal Kabaddi President sacked

2010-03-19T20:48:00.002+08:00

Just as we read news about the Badminton Association of Malaysia secretary Ganga Rao being suspended, I just received a note from my good friend Keshav Raj Gautam from Nepal about the sacking of the president of the Nepal Kabaddi Sunil Rajkarnikar.

Here is the note.

The NSC (National Sports Council) of Nepal has dismissed the Kabaddi association under the president of Mr. Sunil Rajkarnikar.

On the basis of the report given by the team formed by NSC under Lal Kumar Lama for the inspection of Kabaddi association of Nepal, the NSC has dismissed the current president Mr. Rajkarnikar and the new standing committee is formed under the president of Mr. Lal Kumar Lama. The standing committee members are as follows:

President: Mr. Lal Kumar lama

Vice president: Mr. Sanu Kumar Maharjan.

Chairman: Mr. Manoj Kumar Misra

Treasurer: Mr. Birendra Kumar Yadhav.

Members:

Chandra Kanta Jha

This committee has to perform the election for the ANKA within 3 months, as given by the NSC.

After the conflicts of the ex- president Mr. Rajkarnikar and the coach, the NSC of Nepal had form the committee for the inspection of the conflicts, and according to the committee Mr. Rajkarnikar has the following faults:

* During the presidency of Mr. Rajkarnikar no Kabaddi activities were performed (national and international).
* For the long time the general meeting was not held.
* And he insulted Nepal in the international arena.

Can we expect the same here?

2010-03-13T15:27:00.003+08:00

I wrote last month regarding the ruckus at the South Asian Games and how the game of kabaddi is being torn apart by unscrupulous officials.

Internationally the game is dying because officials are putting their interest first before the game.

During the South Asian Games, it was the All Nepal Kabaddi Association (ANKA) president Sunil Rajkarnikar who was at the center of the storm.

You can read in detail about the ruckus he created in my earlier post by clicking here.

The National Sports Council of Nepal had set up an investigation panel and has now come up with their recommendation. And by all accounts it is a damning decision on the high handedness of Sunil.

A report submitted to NSC Member Secretary Hari Babu Chaudhary stated that Sunil´s irresponsible behavior provides evidence that the current leadership was incapable of guiding the association toward the sport´s development. The committee also held Rajkarnikar accountable for violating the Sports Development Act 2048 and undermining the ethics and norms of sportsmanship.

The committee has recommended that the association be dissolved.

It may be wishful thinking, but I do hope that something similar can be done to arrest the decline of the sport of kabaddi in Malaysia.

The Kabaddi Association of Kuala Lumpur had lodged an official report against the Kabaddi Association of Malaysia (KAM) more than a year ago to both the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) and the Sports Commissioners Office.

Till date, despite reminders and personal inquiries, no reply has been given by the KAM, OCM or the Sports Commissioner.

In the meanwhile, the talented players are being victimised.

The Asian Games is just months away and the Malaysian kabaddi team has yet to be formalised. All of the South Asian countries have started their training programme for months now just like Iran and Thailand. Japan kabaddi team is currently touring Mumbai in preparation for the Asian Games.

And in Malaysia, news is that the Malaysian team would be formalised during the SUKMA in Melaka in June.

Apparently the KAM thinks that Malaysia has no players above 23 years of age that can play kabaddi.

Since Malaysia participated in the Asian Games in Busan, every national team picked by the KAM has seen different set of players and have been comprehensively beaten by their rivals in every single competition.

Going by recent records, I would bet that if the OCM and the NSC allows the Malaysian kabaddi team to play in Guangzhou, the results would be embarrassing indeed for Malaysia.

Pole Dancing for Olympics

2010-02-23T07:46:00.002+08:00

I wrote an article yesterday for Sportskeeda here on the herculean task kabaddi has in making it to the Olympics.

And today I come across this story on how pole dancers are now wanting their sport to be included at the Olympics.

Read the article here.

Crazy!!!!

Americas Cup sinking

2010-02-08T20:42:00.002+08:00

I am not sure exactly how much the Monsoon Cup costs to stage in Terengganu every year, but the America's Cup it seems cost a whopping 230 million euros in 2007.

But this year the operating budget would be a mere 8 million euros. The once prestigious Americas Cup is now in the dumps. It has come to such a rut that the organisers gave away the television rights to anyone who wants it.

And it is all because of a legal tussle between two of main protagonist in the Americas Cup.

The 159 year old sailing's longest running competition seems to be headed for a quick death very soon.

Apparently the tussle has to do with how the rules of the competition should be. I am not going to the technicality of it, suffice to say that it is no longer a race in the seas but a race in the courts.

Why is that we have so many rules guiding sports. What was in the past a leisure activity turned into a competition with minimal rules has grown into a monster.

Many sports are now governed with ridiculous rules of participation.

Sportsmen (and women) are being victimised because association officials have some differences.

Do you all know that in one sport association in Malaysia, an entire state athletes have been stopped from all competitions at national level because of a dispute between the state and the national body.

And the dispute has nothing to do with the sport, but just a piece of document that was allegedly not filed in time.

Bangkok Dangerous

2010-02-05T13:54:00.004+08:00

Just over two weeks before they host the Thomas Cup qualifying rounds in Bangkok, Thai badminton has been rocked by the resignation of their top player Boonsak Ponsana together with 11 other players and four coaches.

In the heart of their discontent is the sponsorship contract being signed with Yonex. Under the contract, all players would be bound by a single equipment sponsor. Players would have to sign new contracts that see them remunerated based on their performance.

Most players are not happy with the deal and want to pursue individual sponsorship.

Boonsak has already indicated that he would resign from the national team and pull out of the Thomas Cup and the Asian Games if "some" of the executives remained at the Badminton Association of Thailand.

BAT has already suspended the signing of the contract with Yonex and are now desperately trying to find a solution.

The problem faced by the players is not peculiar to the Thais only. It has happened in Malaysia, Indonesia and a number of other Asian countries.

In Malaysia while some players chose to move out of the national team, many were forced to stay on because they were subtly threatened with the axe from playing in the international circuit.

Asian badminton officials will have to face the fact that badminton is no longer an amateur game. It is a professional game and players need to be allowed to further their careers themselves.

But for many Asian officials, their target has always been doing well at the Multi-sport events and also competitions like the Thomas and Uber Cup.

For the players it is about their financial stability.

This is eerily similar to what transpired with tennis in 1988 at the US OPen when the players revolted against the system.

In what is famously known as the "press conference in the parking lot", the players decided to start their own tour that would first and foremost look after the players interest.

Is badminton headed in the same direction? I don't thinks it would happen soon. If the players are looking to exert more authority, they would first have to look at China.

With the Chinese domination of the game, they would need the Chinese players to lead the way just like the Americans led the way in tennis.

Until that happens, badminton players, especially in Asia would still get a raw deal from the administrators.

Why in Kampung Sura?

2010-02-03T07:44:00.003+08:00

I have never heard of Kampung Sura in Dungun until the recent protest by the folks there against the proposed new velodrome to be built there by the Sports Ministry.

The Sports Minister is cheesed off by the protest and now national track star Azizulhasni Awang has jumped into the wagon accusing the people of Kampung Sura of only thinking of themselves.

But are they? Or is it people like the Minister and Azizul who are only thinking of themselves?

What kind of environmental, traffic or economical impact studies were made before the decision to build the velodrome in Kampung Sura was made? Were the people there consulted before such a decision was made? Do the people or children now in Kampung Sura and nearby areas prefer cycling or other sports? Can the people in the area afford to take up the sport? What other locations were also shortlisted for the velodrome?

Isn't it a coincidence that the Minister also comes from Terengganu and now wants to to built a Velodrome in his state?

How many times have we seen how politicians suddenly want to suddenly do great things for their home state? Remember how one previous Sports Minister insisted and ensured that the Tour de Langkawi went to her constituency.

These type of questions need to be answered first.

The people of Kampung Sura have every right to decide whether they need a velodrome in their backyard, especially when it takes away an area where they have recreational activities.

In Southern Park in Klang, one politicians wife with the support of her husband, started building a centre on a park used by children for their sporting and recreational activities.

The project was funded by the government and was mainly to be used for dancing classes. Ironically the politician's wife was part of the group that practices dancing.

That project is now dead after residents filed a legal suit against the project.

I think the most important aspect that the Sports Ministry needs to look into the development of sport is to create the culture of sports. A velodrome is an elite level development. What we need is to get more people cycling for leisure in the first place and that would slowly translate to more people taking up the sport seriously.

But here we are looking for shortcuts. We have more and more children staying at home, glued to their computers, playing PSP and Wii and we need to find ways to get them outdoors.

And building a velodrome is not going to get them out to play healthier sports.

During the OCM Conference recently, OCM president Tunku Imran said that he rather have 50,000 people taking up sports than having 5 world champions. Because with more people taking up sports, the champions will follow.

I have to agree with that.

Have some ganja maan!

2010-02-01T23:09:00.004+08:00

Reading about the CAF decision to ban Togo from the next two editions of the African Nations Cup reminded me of a scene from Predator 2.

There was this scene in that movie where Danny Glover goes into a smoke filled drug warlords car and the warlord telling Glover "Have Some Ganja maan!"

What you say has that scene got to do with Togo's suspension by the CAF?. Well I believe those guys running the CAF must be smoking lots of that ganja.

They must have taken a couple of puffs and decided that getting your bus machine gunned by terrorist was a normal traffic incident.

Another couple of puffs and they must have decided that having two members of your delegation killed was an act of god.

Yet a couple of more puffs and they decided that having your reserve team goalkeeper rushed to hospital with a bullet in his spine was faking an injury.

I don't care a damn that the Togolese governments decision to ask the team back home is an interference into the CAF's affairs.

The fact that the CAF failed to establish a safe environment for the tournament was enough reason for the team to be asked to return.

This is sheer arrogance from these goons who think football is bigger than everything else.

Come to think of it, even the Malaysian government thinks football is the only worthy sport in the country.

A RM 50 million windfall for football, with RM 10 million already disbursed. But, over at MSSM, half the sports on their calendar is being dropped because of reduced budget.

Ruckus at the South Asian Games

2010-02-01T07:24:00.003+08:00

The Republika of Nepal reports on how a coach and a technical official were removed from the Nepalese kabaddi lists for the South Asian Games on the eleventh hour allegedly by the Nepal Kabaddi Federation president Sunil Raikarnikar (extreme right in the picture being given a tongue lashing by Dinesh Pal).

The report says:

The row ensued after one of the two coaches of the men´s team -- Bimal Pokharel -- did not see his name enlisted in the official squad. Nepal Kabaddi Association President and the manager of the men´s team Sunil Raikarnikar was accused of writing Pokharel´s name off.

Journalists and onlookers had to step in to take matters under control.

“I lined up with the players for the pre-match introductions with Bangladeshi players,” Pokharel said. “But Rajkarnikar removed my name from the squad later on.

However, Rajkarnikar denied it. “The organizers removed his name as only one coach can represent a team,” he said.

Rajkarnikar also claimed that Pal presented a fake certificate and hence was kept out by the organizing committee.

This infuriated the coaches. “It was none other than Rajkarnikar,” women’s team coach Shanti Singh added. “He was also the one who struck off Dinesh Pal, a referee nominated by the National Sports Council (NSC) for the event.”

Men´s coach Tara Singh Bhat expressed his displeasure at Rajkarnikar´s allegations against Pal. “Who are you to challenge NSC´s nomination?” Bhat asked Rajkarnikar.

Coaches and players were also unhappy with Rajkarnikar for he was also serving as a jury for the matches. “He is our team manager but instead of looking after the team, he is sitting on the stage as a jury,” Bhat complained.

I know some of those involved in the controversy.

Pal is a qualified technical official and has officiated in international tournaments before this.

Tara Singh is also a qualified coach and technical official and I had the pleasure of working with him in a tournament before.

Shanti Singh, the women's coach is a vocal but hardworking coach. I first met her at the Islamabad South Asian Games, where I was the Technical Delegate.

Sunil, despite being the president of the Nepal Kabaddi Federation, does not enjoy the trust of the sports authorities in Nepal.

Last year, I was the Technical Delegate for the International Kabaddi League held in Lumbhini, Nepal under the auspices of the Nepal Sports Council. From what I discovered from the sports council, Sunil tried very hard to disrupt and sabotage the tournament.

This considering the fact that Nepal had not conducted a single international tournament in almost a decade.

The problem here is not whether Pal or Pokharel are not qualified. It is basically because the duo are not alligned with Sunil. Sunil, I believe was not able to remove Tara and Shanti because they are veterans at the South Asian Games.

This is the kind of politics that is also practised here in Malaysia in some sports associations.

Qualified officials and worse still talented players are kept out of tournaments because of sports politics.

Take the Kabaddi Association of Kuala Lumpur for instance, despite being national champions for two years in a row, none of the players were even called up for the Macau Indoor Asian Games.

Sports anywhere will only improve if unscrupulous officials are given the boot.

Sunil like many sports officials travel to many tournaments on free tickets and allowance from the organising committee. That is why, despite being the team manager, he is also a member of the jury.

At the last Asian Games in Doha, Malaysia did not have the kabaddi team playing but some Malaysian officials, who are not even qualified, sat on the Jury.

And Sunil's argument that a team cannot have more than one coach is pure bullshit. I was a technical delegate at the SAG before and there is no such rule.

I was the Malaysian team manager at the Busan Asian Games, and India had two coaches lined-up. Prasad Rao was the Technical Delegate at the Games but also doubled up as the Indian chief coach much to the chagrin of many.

As far as kabaddi is concerned this type of double standards is slowly but surely killing off the interest in the game among true sports enthusiasts.

Langkawi???

2010-01-28T07:55:00.003+08:00

The Le Tour de Langkawi misses going to Langkawi by a couple of hundred kilometers again.

I find it funny that the organisers of a race named after Langkawi sees it fit to discard the venue altogether.

What's next? The KL international marathon to be held in Kuala Terengganu? The Malaysian Open badminton in Singapore? The Putrajaya Night Marathon in Labuan?

Whats in a name?

2010-01-26T14:57:00.002+08:00

What is it in a name? Plenty it seems for both Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Islamic Solidarity Games, scheduled for April this year in Iran has been canceled over a dispute between the countries over the name of the waterway that divides both countries.

The Riyadh based Islamic Solidarity Sports Federations (ISSF) insists that the name Persian Gulf be omitted from all materials relating to the games. They want the gulf to be indicated as the Arabian Gulf.

The Games was postponed from October last year in an attempt to resolve the issue. Ironically the Games was mooted as an avenue to forge better solidarity between the 57 members of the ISSF.

Now, if they cant even agree on a name, how are they going to forge solidarity.

Breaking the glass ceiling

2010-01-25T07:32:00.002+08:00

In a sports world dominated by men, women have always played second fiddle. The likes of Williams sisters and Annika Sorenstam may be dominant in their respective sports, but they are still seen as the weaker sex.

But now one woman can claim to be being equal to her male peers - Kelly Kulick.

Kulick has just won the PBA Tournament of Champions in Las Vegas beating off a string of male contestants.

The PBA for me is about the best arena for bowling. What we read daily in our newspapers on the exploits of our local bowlers is amateur stuff. The PBA is where the cream of world ranked bowlers ply their trade. This is where our very own Shalin Zulkifli is pitting her skills against the best of the world.

Kulick, is currently the second ranked women bowler in the PBA list. Shalin is ranked 16th.

It was not an easy feat for Kulick, who only qualified for the tournament after having won the PBA Womens World Championships.

For me, bowling is one of those sports that should do away with the gender qualification. Men and women should be allowed to go head on.

The same should go to sports like snooker and billiards, archery, darts and most indoor games like chess, carrom etc.

Why the need for gender classifications when these sports are entirely about skills and physical strength has little impact.

Coming back to Kulick, I think she has done more to the cause of women in sport than the likes of Michelle Wii, who is paid insane fees to go up against the men in golf.

Forget about what the rest of the women are going to do in sports this year. If there is going to be an award for the best women sportswomen of the year, give it to her now.

First Class all the way.

2010-01-24T09:46:00.004+08:00

Malaysian Amateur Athletics Union (MAAU) affiliates have come out in praise of their president and have proclaimed that all is well with the association. Why, one former deputy president even claimed that MAAU is a first class organisation.

So that would mean that everything that we have read in the newspapers was blatant lies. Shame on those who have tried to sully the good name of the MAAU.

The criticism on the failure of the athletes to meet their target at the recent SEA Games was also without merit. After all, they did win more medals than any other sport at the SEA Games with the exception of swimming (which ironically is also headed by the MAAU President).

First class organisation! Who are we trying to kid.

This is so typical of the Bolehland mentality.

When the going gets tough, the weak band together.

I think our sports administrators must admit weakness when it is so. Why hide behind nonsensical excuses and rhetorics when what we need is affirmative action.

I got a chance to attend the Olympic Council of Malaysia's (OCM) Conference yesterday. The conference was to map out the OCM's strategic plan for 2011-2016.

Much of the OCM's president's speech at the conference was about how well the OCM have fared over the past years. He even listed Malaysia's successes at the Olympics, Asian, Commonwealth and SEA Games in his opening address.

But was the OCM responsible for these success? Did they assist in athletic development?

I could not stay until the end of the conference, but I have no doubt that someone would have said that the conference was a great success.

Was it? I would say that the conference was a failure at the onset itself, basically because the OCM failed to ensure the top brass of the various national sports associations attend the conference.

If the conference was indeed to map out the OCM's strategic plan, than the top honchos from the affiliates should have attended the meeting. Less than 20% of the president's and secretaries from the national sports associations attended the conference.

Some associations did not even send a single representative to the conference.

Malaysian sports administrators have perfected the art of taichi when it comes to finding excuses.

When the heat is on, they all band together and throw in rhetorics and statistics to justify their value to the fraternity.

Please, we do not need another Obama. All talk and less action.

Politics rules ok!

2010-01-22T12:32:00.002+08:00

I am amused but not at all surprised by the snub given to the 11 Pakistani players by the Indian Premier League (IPL) teams.

Despite, spending millions to bid for players from other top cricket nations, the IPL teams saw no reason to pick anyone from the Pakistani side that won the Twenty20 World Cup last year.

Politics? Maybe!

But isn't sports all about politics nowadays.

Let me give you a local example. The Kuala Lumpur Kabaddi team won back-to-back President's Cup (the sports national championships). But none of the KL players were picked to represent the country at the Asian Indoor Games in Macau.

The same happened at the recent Asian Indoor Games. The KL team won the SUKMA convincingly and again none of the players were picked to represent the country.

Politics? Of course!

Racist? You bet!

2010-01-21T08:46:00.003+08:00

The All American Basketball Alliance (AABA) wants to start a basketball league entirely made up by white Americans only.

On the surface it did not look all that racist for me as I have seen similar events being held in Malaysia.

After all in Malaysia, we do have sports associations exclusive for certain races only. Being brought up in such environment may have made me numb towards what could be perceived as racist in other countries.

The reason given by the AABA in organising the league, however, smacks of racism to the core.

Here is an excerpt of it:

Don "Moose" Lewis, the commissioner of the AABA, said the reasoning behind the league's roster restrictions is not racism.

"There's nothing hatred about what we're doing," he said. "I don't hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here's a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like."

Lewis said he wants to emphasize fundamental basketball instead of "street-ball" played by "people of color." He pointed out recent incidents in the NBA, including Gilbert Arenas' indefinite suspension after bringing guns into the Washington Wizards locker room, as examples of fans' dissatisfaction with the way current professional sports are run.

"Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?" he said. "That's the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction."

For me this is bullshit.

But, not as much a our own former prime minister who is using the movie Avatar to hide his blend of racism.

For the record the Navi's from Avatar cannot play in the AABA too, because they are not white and they were not born in America.

Sports and Peace

2010-01-16T11:01:00.002+08:00

Adam Hofstetter is a writer and editor based in New York and this latest piece he had written needs no explanation.

Last Friday morning, the people of Togo woke up hopeful of their national soccer team’s chances in the African Cup of Nations tournament. By afternoon there was little hope left. Gunmen in Angola’s volatile Cabinda region, where the tournament is being held, had ambushed the Togolese team bus. The assistant coach, the team spokesman, and the bus driver were dead; eight others aboard the bus were wounded, including the starting goalie. “Our boys went to Angola to celebrate the best in African [soccer]," a local Togo leader told the Associated Press, "but they came back with dead bodies and bullet wounds.”

Meanwhile, that same week, Iran’s national soccer federation found itself embroiled in a scandal so embarrassing that the head of the federation issued a public apology, and one of his top officers resigned. The “scandal” was the unintended inclusion of Israel among the recipients of Iran’s annual New Year’s greeting to FIFA members.

Taken together, the two events send a clear message to the many world leaders, organizations, and athletes trying to use sports to pave the road to world peace: it’s not working.

Sports have long been idealized as a way to heal wounds, mend fences, and rise above differences among cultures and nations. As we look ahead to the Olympics in a few weeks and the World Cup after that, are we fools to think that sports can not only transcend politics but pave a path to peace?

Nobody sells the sports-as-diplomacy theme better than the Olympics, which aims “to build a peaceful and better world thanks to sport.” Most everything about the Games echoes these ideals: the interlocking Olympic rings that symbolize the coming together of the five continents, the determinedly harmonious atmosphere at Olympic village, and the very existence of the IOC’s Olympic Truce Foundation and its stated goal of finding “peaceful and diplomatic solutions to the conflicts around the world.”

Soccer’s World Cup, too, is often viewed as an event so transcendent of politics and prejudice that even nations embroiled in war lay down their arms and come together for a few weeks to cheer on their national team. It seems to have worked for Côte d’Ivoire, where star striker Didier Drogba spoke publicly before, during, and after the 2006 World Cup about the tournament’s ability to turn his country’s attention away from civil war. It’s impossible to determine how much of a role soccer truly played in the ending of the conflict, but a peace agreement was reached less than a year after the tournament.

And let’s not forget the movie Invictus, a fictionalized but largely accurate account of how, after being elected South Africa’s first post-Apartheid president, Nelson Mandela shrewdly turned to the rugby World Cup to help foster the country’s healing process and prevent a civil war that many feared was inevitable.

Other world leaders have used sports as a means by which to make conciliatory international gestures. The Chinese government famously invited American ping-pong players to exhibition matches in China in April 1971, the first time Americans were allowed into the country since 1949. And sure enough, within a year of China’s “ping-pong diplomacy,” President Richard Nixon made his own historic trip to China, ending two decades of unfriendly relations between the two superpowers.

China and Japan enacted their version of ping-pong diplomacy last May when Chinese president Hu Jintao played against a Japanese teenager during the first visit of a Chinese president to Japan in 10 years—a visit that Hu referred to as “a warm spring.”

And nonprofit organizations around the world now seek to bridge cultural divides and eliminate hatred by getting warring groups to play sports together. Last summer, for example, Los Angeles Lakers guard Jordan Farmar led basketball camps in Israel that brought together Arab and Jewish children. An organization called PeacePlayers International runs similar youth basketball leagues for Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, blacks and whites in South Africa, Israelis and Palestinians, and Turkish and Greek factions in Cypress. And UK-based Football 4 Peace International uses soccer much the same way in Israel and in Northern Ireland.

But despite the many feel-good stories, high profile sporting events have served equally well, it seems, as a means by which to sow dissension: think of the Munich massacre, or the 1996 Olympic Park bombing. And in 1916, the unifying power of sports proved no match for the hostilities of World War I: the Berlin Olympics, long planned for that year, had to be canceled.

The World Cup has seen its share of political violence as well. In 1969 El Salvador beat Honduras in a World Cup qualifying match, igniting longstanding tension between the two countries into a brief war. Perhaps having learned its lesson, just last year FIFA indefinitely postponed a match between Chad and Sudan as hostilities simmered between the two.

And Iran has prioritized its hatred over its chances at athletic success every time: the Iranian government’s longstanding refusal to acknowledge Israel’s sovereignty has led its athletes to skip all direct competition against Israel, including FIFA matches and Olympic events.

We want so badly to believe that all we really need to achieve world peace is a ball. But even some of the seeming triumphs of sports over hatred have been mirages.

In September 2008, the presidents of Armenia and Turkey used soccer to reopen diplomatic dialogue. The two countries had severed relations and sealed their common border more than a decade earlier, but a World Cup qualifying match between their national teams prompted Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to extend an invitation to his Turkish counterpart. It was the first-ever visit to Armenia by a Turkish head of state, and prompted Time magazine to wonder, “ Can Soccer Heal Turkey-Armenia Rift?”

The answer, it appeared, was yes. Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s historic visit to Armenia eventually resulted in an agreement between the countries to reestablish ties and reopen their border. But as of today the Turkish Parliament has yet to ratify the agreement, insisting that Armenia first make territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. Politics, it seems, is more complex than a soccer match.

Also last summer, the U.S. national team played in Cuba for the first time since 1947. But while many pundits saw the game as an opportunity for improved political relations, the match was due more to FIFA requirements than any diplomatic efforts on the part of either country.

In truth, U.S.-Cuban relations have changed little despite several sports-related efforts at friendship. American Little League teams twice visited Cuba for exhibition games in the last decade, but the Bush administration officially discouraged the practice and made no corresponding diplomatic efforts. And when the Baltimore Orioles hosted the Cuban baseball team in 1999, the game was briefly interrupted by a Cuban-American protester who ran onto the field with an anti-Castro sign and was promptly pummeled by the Cuban umpire stationed near second base. World peace? Not in the infield.

Still, we let our hopes obscure reality. We were delighted in July when Iraq proved stable enough to host its first national soccer team home game since 2002. But the cheers of the capacity crowd at Fransou Hariri Stadium included chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

With people so desperate to kill us that they’re willing to hide explosives in their underwear, and so much death and destruction in the news, we crave feel-good solutions that will promote world harmony. We tell ourselves that the Olympics can make everybody love each other; that basketball and soccer can bring peace to Israel, conciliation to Ireland, and understanding to South Africa; that sports’ power to heal is stronger than hatred’s power to destroy.

But when three men on their way to a soccer tournament are gunned down by separatists in a country that was probably too unstable to be hosting a major international sports event in the first place, we learn a different lesson. If sports are really going to save the world, we need those kids who are now shooting baskets and goals in Israel and Ireland and South Africa to become not athletes but political leaders. And they’d better grow up fast.

Way to go Taufik

2010-01-15T12:44:00.002+08:00

Despite winning the Olympics and the world championships, Taufik Hidayat has always been criticised for his partying lifestyle.

After three long years, his dream of setting up his own training academy is expected to take shape this year.

The Taufik Hidayat Arena is set start construction works on a 6,600 square meter lot in Kelapa Dua, Ciracas, East Jakarta.

A bold venture indeed by someone we had always come to look at as a talented but spoilt child.

Now, how many of our own sportsmen can we say have taken the such a venture?

2010 may be a good year for the rebel son of Indonesian badminton. His wife is also expecting their first child in June this year.

The Champ is here?

2010-01-14T23:11:00.002+08:00

It has been ages since Malaysians witnessed a top class boxing bout right here at home.

The last great fight I remember that took place was the bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Bugner. I was still primary school and got to watch the bout on a small black and white television at school.

Neighbours Indonesia and Thailand have a number of world champions in their midst, albeit in the lower weight divisions.

Filipino Manny Pacquiao is one such champion, the first fighter to win in seven different classes.

Well Pacquiao won't be fighting in Malaysia anytime soon but his immediate future in boxing will be decided here.

Pacquiao's urine sample (what you thought he is gonna come here for real) is being tested at our very own Doping Control Centre in Penang.

What's the real reason?

2010-01-13T09:05:00.004+08:00

Over the past one week Berita Harian has been highlighting the issue of the inclusion of Tan Kim Her in the doubles coaching set-up without the knowledge of both the chief doubles coach Rexy Mainaky and the National Sports Council.

The Berita Harian has also highlighted that the entire episode smacks of favouritism by a certain BAM official.

But what is the actual rational behind the attempt to bring in Tan Kim Her and also supposedly Yap Kim Hock into the coaching set-up?

Does it really have to do with improving the doubles or is there a hidden agenda?

There has been some rumours going around for some time now that a female player had lodged a complain against one of the coaches for sexual harassment.

Rumours are also that the said coach is being protected by the official as taking action against him may result in the official having a fallout with some other influential people within the badminton fraternity.

Is the reshuffle an attempt to brush these allegations under the carpet? I want to wait until the reshuffle is announced and if the alleged coach is moved elsewhere than the rumours may have some truth to it.

If nothing happens, than maybe it was just another rumour that we Malaysians love.

Low (n) bowls

2010-01-12T21:48:00.003+08:00

Match fixing in lawn bowls?

The New Zealand four man team has been found guilty of deliberately losing to Thailand at the Asia Pacific Championships in August. The loss allowed the Kiwis to play a weaker opponent in the semi-finals and eliminated Canada from the competition.

No penalty has been determined yet for the players, though all four, including their two time world champion Gary Lawson, were suspended from the New Zealand team during the inquiry.

What's next? Fixing a chess game?

But at least the sport has the balls (no pun intended) to get to the bottom of it. I remember more than a decade ago, when China did the same thing at the Thomas Cup. And again during the World Championships. No action was taken by the badminton federation.

All in the family

2010-01-12T21:14:00.003+08:00

It was a shock but not a surprise for me when I read about how the Indian Formula One race became a private venture after first being touted as an Indian Olympic Association event.

But before I go into it, just read the report below:

Indian Olympic Association president Suresh Kalmadi has once again run into trouble with the Ministry of Sports over the proposed Formula One Grand Prix race. As first reported by The Indian Express (August 22, 2009) the Grand Prix (slated for 2011) was announced two years ago by Kalmadi as an IOA event, but was subsequently bagged by a private firm which had his son as part owner and his daughter and her husband as directors.

The sports ministry had turned down the request of the private company — JPSK Sports — for releasing foreign exchange to the tune of $40 million required for the payment of annual license fee. On December 23, the sports ministry dispatched its second missive to Kalmadi on the subject of the Formula One Grand Prix which follows an earlier query sent to him on September 23.

The ministry’s letters, copies of which are with The Indian Express, demand that Kalmadi submit all documentation such as the resolutions passed by the IOA for hosting the event and copies of correspondence on “official discussions” between the IOA president and Bernie Ecclestone, the CEO of F1.

Now, as to why I am not surprised. A couple of years ago, I met up with Mr Kalmadi over problems relating to one of the Indian sports association.

I was taken aback when he told me that while he agreed with the issues we had brought to his attention, he was not in a position to act on it. The reason he gave was because he was up for reelection and needed the votes from the said association to retain his post.

In the same boat

2010-01-11T08:28:00.004+08:00

It seems that the MAAU is not the only athletic association in the region to be mired by problems.

Neighbours Singapore Athletic Association (SAA) are also being investigated. The Singapore Sports Council's (SSC) audit of their accounts have found some irregularities.

One of it is the S$120,000 owed by the SAA to its president Loh Lin Kor for entertainment expenses accumulated over four to five years.

Loh had claimed that the expenses were for hosting foreign guests, business meetings etc.

The SAA have also been found to have issued S$500,000 in cash cheques in 2008 alone.

The SAA lost its S$900,000 funding last year. They had received approximately S$12 million for their 2004-2008 programme.

I find it interesting that the SSC conducts audit of the associations that receives funding from them. Does the National Sports Council practice a similar procedure?

The Sports Commissioners office certainly does not conduct any audit of accounts submitted to them by sports associations.

And over in India, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) is under threat of deregistration by the Indian Sports Ministry.

It seems that the AFI had failed to provide nine specific queries including audited reports and accounts for the past two years.

And guess who is the life president of the AFI - it is none other than the Delhi Commonwealth Games boss Suresh Kalmadi.

AFI Secretary General Lalit Bhanot is also Secretary General of the 2010 Organising Committee and Joint Secretary of the Indian Olympic Association of which Kalmadi is the undisputed boss.

Hockey India in crisis

2010-01-09T10:19:00.004+08:00

India is hosting the World Cup next month but the associations problems it seems to be spiraling out of control. First the Indian players have boycotted training after Hockey India failed to pay their dues and bonuses for the past 18 months.

Second the new elections of Hockey India is also embroiled in controversy. The Indian Sports Ministry have demanded Hockey India to make elections fair and transparent and have also send their conditions to the FIH.

The FIH are also not happy with the adhoc Hockey India committee that has changed the constitution of the association without due process.

Well sports elected officials everywhere including in Malaysia seem more interested in bending the rules to keep power instead of having the interest of sports at heart.

Johnny Come Lately

2010-01-09T08:18:00.003+08:00

If the MAAU had wanted to do some damage control by calling for a press conference yesterday, they certainly bungled it up.

Being a former sports journalist, I would have done the same thing. First the PC was rescheduled at the eleventh hour. After a three hour delay, the PC was again delayed for another hour on the excuse that the president was caught in a traffic jam.

I have worked with the current MAAU president Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim as his secretary in the Kabaddi Association of Malaysia about five years ago.

He is not known for his punctuality. Maybe the delay was actually caused by traffic jam. Maybe not. We will never know.

But the incident would now make MAAU's attempt to stave off criticism as well as the corruption allegations surrounding them much more difficult.

On a lighter note, a report on Wall Street Journal on the best and worst jobs in the USA has ranked Reporter at 184th spot. It seems that being a seaman, painter, dishwasher, chauffeur, plumber, maid, waiter and even a janitor is better.

Check out the list here.

Show me the money

2010-01-06T10:19:00.003+08:00

With the recent decision by Petronas to sponsor the Mercedes team instead of the local Lotus F1 team, the Malaysian outfit will need to find the money elsewhere.

And from reports by Pitpass business editor Chris Sylt, the money is not going to come from either Proton or Lotus. Neither Proton nor Lotus are shareholders of the company that has been established to run the team.

Although we are not in privy of the exact nature of the agreement between the company and Proton and Lotus, the car company it seems are not financially obligated.

Just how much is it going to cost the team to function?

Ferrari has the cheapest budget among all the teams with a 37 million pound (just over RM 200 million) estimate.

Renault spent an estimated RM 540 million last year, BMW approximately RM 570 million, Mercedes about RM 756 million and Toyota a whopping RM857 million last year.

Toyota withdrew from the championships this year while Renault sold majority stake in its beleaguered team to Luxembourg businessman Gerard Lopez, an early investor in Skype.

The report in Pitpass has this to say:

Sylt's Formula Money company calculated the number of cars the manufacturers needed to sell in order to cover their cost of competing by dividing their budgets for the sport by the amount of revenue generated per car sold. The spending on F1 comes from a car manufacturer's marketing budget which is, in itself, a cost for the company. Its revenues from car sales give it the money to spend on F1 and cover other costs such as building the cars themselves. If sales fall then the manufacturers may slip into loss meaning that they are likely to cut unnecessary costs with F1 being at the top of the list since it is not core to their business of building cars.

Teams have to sell a minimum number of additional cars to cover the cost of their involvement in F1.

BMW had to sell 3,635 cars, Ferari a mere 153, Mercedes 4, 154, Renault 8,206 and Toyota 9,701 cars.

With the current economic situation, it would be a difficult task indeed for the Malaysian outfit to find the sponsorship especially with neither Proton nor Lotus nor Petronas in the picture.

If the sponsorship does not come in as expected from other sources, are we going to have a bailout to safeguard the One Malaysia brand?

Read more about his here and here.

Velappan is absolutely right!

2010-01-05T09:10:00.004+08:00

I have to agree with Datuk Peter Velappan's assessment that the decision to have a full time national team is a step backwards for football and in the same breath for most other team sports like hockey.

Full time national teams are all right for individual sports like badminton, tennis etc, but in most team sports it would not work.

It may be necessary for sports that do not have a structured domestic programme or their own year-long competitive programme.

But the FAM already has a running league as well as many other domestic age-group competitions.

There is no guarantee that a full time team would rake in results at the international level. If that was the case, many of the top teams even in Asia would have adopted it long ago.

For me this is another attempt to reap instant results and foregoing the long term needs of the sport.

I am also, as usual, disturbed by the signals that the Sports Ministry sends out by such decisions..

Is a football player more of a sportsman than others? Is football the elite class and other sports pariahs? Don't other sportsmen put in as much of not more effort in their respective sport?

If going by the same logic, should we also not have full time teams for other sports too. If the Sports Ministry feels that football can deliver with such a decision than they should also seriously consider the other team sports too.

I am not sure how many of the other team sports have full time national teams, but can the Sports Ministry also fund teams from Netball, Basketball, Softball, Volleyball, Cricket, Rugby, Baseball, Kabaddi etc?

Football winning the gold at the SEA Games is well and good but that does not mean that the achievement of the others were any lower. What about the Malaysian boxers who won gold in Laos?

I am still of the opinion that most Malaysian sports authorities have no care on the holistic development of sports and sports culture but have their sights set only on instant success and that too only when it involves the more popular sports.

Note: For those of you may have missed it, Indonesia was fifth overall at the 2005 Sea Games, fourth at the 2007 Games and now third in the 2009 Sea Games. What they did was to appoint Charles Sturt University (Bathurst, Australia) to provide the appropriate services in strength and conditioning, physical preparation and coach education for long-term success. The results speaks for itself.

Sports Predictions for 2010

2010-01-04T10:36:00.002+08:00

I just put out the crystal ball and my prediction for sports in 2010 are as follows:

1. China will retain the Thomas Cup defeating either Indonesia or Korea in the final.

2. There will be a new Sports Minister for Malaysia.

3. England will not win the FIFA World Cup.

4. Nicol David will still be World No. 1

5. Lee Chong Wei will not win the World Championships. Lin Dan will get his hattrick.

6. Malaysia will have one of their worst showings in the Asian Games.

7. Tiger Woods will miss most of the season but will still win one major title.

8. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will still slug it out for the top honours in men's tennis. But the women's competition would swing the way of Kim Clitjers.

9. Lewis Hamilton will win the F1 ahead of Alonso and Schumi.

10. New champions in both the English and Spanish Leagues. Read Chelsea and Real Madrid.

11. There will be an attempted terrorist attack at the Commonwealth Games.

12. Rafael Benitez sacked.

13. Monsoon Cup will still be an irrelevant sport event for most Malaysians.

14. Usain Bolt to break the world 100m record again.

15. Major changes in sports associations including the OCM.

There, these are my predictions for 2010. It may go bust but I am pretty sure at least one would come true.

Welcome mistake!

2010-01-02T18:47:00.002+08:00

It may have been a mistake, but the New Year Greeting send by the Iranian Football Federation to their Israeli counterpart is still a welcome start in bridging enmity through sports.

The Iranian Football Federation sent a New Year greeting to their Israeli counterpart. Officials in Tehran said it was a mistake.

The director of foreign relations for the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Ali Ardebili, quickly responded to Israeli Army Radio that he did not mean to send the greeting to the Israel Football Association.

"It is a greeting sent to every country in the world," Ardebili said. He quickly then inquired: "Are you talking from Israel? I can't speak with you. It's a mistake, it's a mistake."

The greeting was received by the head of the Israel Football Association's legal department, Amir Navon.

Read more about it here.

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T20:16:00.002+08:00

2009 was a pretty rocky year for me and I was not able to make any update. Well 2010 is here and I am definitely going to start pouring my thoughts with at least one or two posts a week.

Meanwhile, let me wish you all a Happy New Year!

Great article

2009-01-06T07:44:00.001+08:00

I am back after a pretty long break. Not sure whether I will be able to update daily. But certainly hope to do so. Anyway read this article by a leading Indian sports journalist that for me is a great look into sports.

By Vidyadhar Date

The competitive frenzy for winning in sports has been fuelled by aggressive marketing. Together they ensure that while a minority is trained with superlative sports facilities, the majority is deprived of even basic amenities to play and breathe fresh air. In India, market forces have pampered cricket while harming all other games in the process.

India won just three medals at the recent Beijing Olympics, though it did better than in the past. This is seen as a breakthrough by our ruling class, which now wants the nation to gear up for further success at the London Olympics in 2012.

This is one way of diverting attention from the way this country is governed and the large numbers of babies with famished bodies. The competitive frenzy for medals ignores a basic issue. We first need to create a healthy nation with widespread participation in sports. Instead, the sports system is turning people into mere passive spectators and consumers; and players into sports celebrities endorsing brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike and Adidas.

Basic contradiction

The fact is that competitive sports do not create a culture of physical fitness and health. As a prominent Chinese artiste Ai Weiwei has pointed out, despite China’s record 51 gold medals, the country’s health standards especially for children are not up to the mark. Australia has soared to the top of the obesity chart in the world after the Sydney Olympics of 2000. The United States, which leads in the commercialisation of sports and has created a huge sports industry, is notorious for growing obesity and a healthcare system which is beyond the reach of most of the poor people. Michael Moore’s award-winning documentary film Sicko is a vivid indictment of this system.

A recent survey in England has shown that emphasis on competitive sports covers only a few students and leaves out most others who are denied facilities for basic physical exercises which can help achieve health and fitness.

So there is a basic contradiction here. While huge amounts are spent on imparting superlative athletic skills to a minority, the majority is deprived of the most basic amenities to exercise and even breathe fresh air.

Competitive sports generate belief in capitalist values. We start believing that competition is the order of life, when in fact we should be striving for cooperation and friendship. Competitive sports make us feel that one must reach the top, be the first, and be willing to make any compromise. This prepares people to feel that since the chief executive officers and other entrepreneurs have reached the top through competition, he or she deserves all the wealth they are getting.

Organised sports is now a big business and is controlled by the sports-goods industry, one of the biggest and fastest growing sectors in the US. Michael Phelps, the swimming star in Beijing, is now virtually a puppet in the hands of the corporates. One of his first public acts after the Olympics was to visit the New York Stock Exchange, ring the opening bell and declare that he was happy to be there on behalf of Speedo, the swimwear manufacturing company, and other sponsors. Immediately after winning the record eighth gold medal Phelps attended a function where he ate McDonald’s food with children. He has also come in for criticism for promoting other unhealthy foods which have high sugar and fats contents that cause obesity.

Expensive and scandal-ridden

The three Olympic medals and the recent world billiards championship won by Pankaj Advani of Bangalore suggest that India's best performances are in individual events and that we are severely wanting in games which need team spirit. The Olympic medal tallies in the last several years show that countries with high gross domestic product (GDP) or totalitarian countries are on top. But India, with all the talk about being an emerging superpower, has done worse than poor African and Caribbean countries. Even in cricket, India with all its disproportionate investment in the game has fared poorly and was knocked out of the World Cup at a preliminary stage in 2007. And this in a game played by only a handful of countries in the world, mostly former British colonies.

We need to look afresh at our sports policy. Unfortunately, even the left parties do not seem to have any alternative view of sports. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) leaders in West Bengal show the same fascination for the expensive, time-consuming, scandal-ridden game of cricket and seek to control the Cricket Association of Bengal.

Yoga and pranayam are excellent exercises which can play a great role in creating a healthy society at no cost whatsoever. They have nothing to do with religion as is clear from their growing popularity in the West. The left should have championed these exercises long ago but has ignored them and has allowed the religious right to monopolise them. Baba Ram Dev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar clearly belong to the right but they have popularised the simple exercises at mass gatherings and have become cult figures. One of the fastest growing organisations in Maharashtra is Brahmavidya Sadhak Sangh which is close to the [extreme-right] Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. Its teaching material is replete with Sanskrit prayers, and a heavy emphasis on god and spirituality. There is a stress on the concept of immortality. The sadhaks or students are told not to think of death, and that life can be prolonged through one’s own efforts. That is fine but it sounds grotesque in a country that is doing little to check infant mortality.

Why has India done so badly in cricket despite the full play of market forces in the game, the huge corporate sponsorships, and the hefty financial incentives to players? The failure of our highly paid star cricketers can be compared with the incompetence of the overpaid bankers in the recent financial meltdown in the US.

Pumped-up bodies and egos

Ironically, it is the market forces which sponsor cricket that are grabbing the public grounds. Ordinary citizens do not have enough space to breathe, let alone play. Mumbai, India's most market-dominated city, has 0.03 acre space per 1000 people, the lowest ratio among cities in the world. Even the few available open spaces are grabbed by the clubs of the rich.

In Bandra (east) in Mumbai, citizens have been waging a prolonged battle against the grabbing of a large ground by the MIG Club (which is very upper class, though its name stands for middle income group). The ground is situated in a prime location. At the same time there is a proliferation of gyms -- privatised, expensive places for largely macho, narcissistic, artificial body building. The cult of the gym has spread rapidly, fuelled by the equipment industry.

It is an irony that the treadmill, the symbol of monotony which Karl Marx criticised for its deadening impact, is now a status symbol and even corporate offices now have a treadmill if not a full-fledged gym. Actually, some of the machines (if not handled properly) can cause serious injury if not death. George Bush, the US president, carries a treadmill even on his tours.

The macho culture is continuously glamourised in the media with pictures of pumped-up bodies of stars like Shahrukh Khan. Can one imagine legendary film actors like Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor with artificial looking bodies? The market forces now even want to promote gyms at home costing nearly Rs2,00,000. So there is enough space in affluent homes for swimming pools and gyms but not enough space in the city to shelter the poor.

The market forces have in fact harmed India’s sports by pampering cricket and neglecting the common people’s games like hockey and football, not to speak of indigenous games like kabaddi and kho-kho. Balbir Singh, a hockey star of the Olympics in Tokyo, expressed his anguish at a seminar in Delhi saying he wants to write his autobiography but no one is willing to publish it and that he was even thinking of selling his land in order to bring out the book.

We clearly need a proper history of our sports like the recently published People’s History of Sports in the US by the Marxist sports writer Dave Zirin. It says that the passion we put into sports can transform it from a kind of mindless escape into a site of resistance. Zirin gives several examples of champion sportspersons, like Muhammad Ali and David Meggysey, boldly supporting the struggle for civil rights and opposing US aggression in Vietnam. Ali was the most militant of them all. He refused to be drafted into the military, was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000. He was stripped of his title and a vicious campaign was launched against him as was done against several dissenters in the US. Billi Mills, the Native American, won the 10,000 metres running final at the Tokyo Olympics but quit athletics a year later in protest against the Vietnam War.

The year 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of the expression of the power of protest of black people at the Mexico Olympics when the US athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, first and third in the 200-metre final, gave the Black Power fist salute at the award ceremony.

Sports stars can become powerful icons of dissent. That is why the system is doing everything to silence them through generous sponsorships. Naomi Klein has dealt with this issue in her excellent book No Logo, which the Guardian has called the Das Kapital of the anti-corporate movement.

Where was the black outrage over China’s role in abetting Sudan which is persecuting black people, the daily Independent asked recently. Eighty per cent of Sudan's oil is sent to China. The only way one can expect black athletes to protest today is by threatening to take away their lucrative corporate sponsorships, says Zirin.

It is sad that those who can very well afford to resist the market forces are becoming their willing accomplices. For example, Stella Mccartney, daughter of the famous Beatle Paul McCartney and animal rights activist Linda, designs sportswear for women for the brand Adidas. Her father, who is perhaps the richest singer in the world, has no objections to his daughter doing so.

Tragic consequences

In the highly competitive sports with high financial stakes, sportspersons -- be they cricketers, tennis players, athletes or gymnasts -- are forced to stretch their bodies beyond limits. That is why players in their teens require frequent surgery and many have to retire early. Among the most tragic victims are the champion athletes of the former German Democratic Republic who were fed drugs for performance enhancement by government in pursuit of gold medals. The athletes won the medals but at a great cost to their health. Athletes in their 40s now have bones like those of 80-year-olds. Some have got compensation for the damage caused by state-sponsored doping but in the case of several athletes the records have been destroyed and there is little they can do.

Every four years in the Olympic Games someone is called the greatest athlete. But the truly great athlete of all time was Jim Thorpe – not in just one sport like swimming but in several events like long jump, high jump, 100 metres and javelin, winning the gold medal in the decathlon and pentathlon in the Olympics in 1912. He was also the leading US baseball and football player. But he was treated shabbily by the US establishment partly because he was of Native-American origin; Native Americans were not even recognised as citizens then in their own land. He was stripped of his gold medals which were returned to the family only in 1983, 30 years after his death. His crime was that in his boyhood he had earned $25 a week as a baseball player. So he was seen as a professional in the days when professionals were looked down upon by the elite.

The very society, which treated Thorpe so cruelly, is now turning sportspersons into superbrands, commodities to be traded. So Nike star Thiery Henry defected to Reebok in 2006, where CEO Paul Harrington spoke of ways of marketing the star. When swimming champion Phelps visited the NYSE, he was described by the traders as the “hottest commodity” from Beijing. Even before Phelps triumphed in Beijing, a number of big brands like Visa, Omega, AT&T, Kelloggs, Hilton and Speedo had made marketing deals with him.

Ordinary people, however, are denied elementary sporting facilities and are reduced to couch potatoes, confined to being mere viewers of events on television. The excitement and spontaneity that comes out of actual participation in sports has been drained from people’s lives. Sachin Tendulkar and other stars learnt their cricket in the compounds of their buildings or in lanes and alleys. But even these spaces are now beyond the reach of the common people.

Children now spend more time on games on computer screens than outdoors. Exercise and play have to be a natural part of our lives like reading, talking or eating. But people are now reduced to a captive television audience, mere eyeballs to watch commercials of giant companies packaged with sports.

[Vidyadhar Date is a journalist, who has worked at the Times of India in Mumbai for 36 years.This article first appeared in the November 22, 2008, edition of Economic and Political Weekly.

HAPPY DIWALI

2008-10-26T07:40:00.001+08:00

Wishing all of you a Happy Diwali!

Show me the money!

2008-10-24T18:39:00.000+08:00

I have not got a chance to view the proposal from the group of 102 ex-hockey internationals on how to improve the standard and further develop the sport of hockey in Malaysia.

But I have had the privilege to read the Wawasan Hoki Negara paper.

I can make a comparision of both but the one issue that I found that was lacking in the Wawasan Hoki Negara was the absence of marketing and sponsorship issues.

You can have the best of plans and I am sure many in Malaysia can come up with the best of plans. But without money all these plans are just a pile of paper.

If the new proposal does not have a section on how the Malaysian Hockeyy Federation (MHF) was going to pay for the plans, than it would end up being another pile of paper.

Implementing any plan requires money and I doubt that the any government of the day was going to fully sponsor associations in implementing their plans.

When the coffers start drying up, than the associations have to look into whether they want to concentrate on the development or their elite teams. And more often than not, it is the development that gets dumped first.

Why? Immaterial of what everyone claims, if the association does not have an elite team, they get hammered - by the players, by the media, by the politicians, by the people.

Imagine the MHF saying that they were cutting off their elite programme for a couple of years to concentrate on pure development.

So the first thing that I expect to see in the proposal made by ex-internationals was how they propose to finance the plan. And please do not say that the Sports Ministry must come up with it.

Show me the money!

AFC can go! BWF?

2008-10-24T18:10:00.000+08:00

The issue of the relocation of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) headquarters has been in the forefront for the last few days.

Personally I don't think it is imperative for us to have the heaquarters of any sports to be located in Malaysia.

It is just a matter of boosting our own egos, by claiming we are the pivot for sports in the world.

Sports Minister Datuk Ismail Sabri is peeved with the conditions made by the AFC to ensure that the AFC remains in Malaysia. And he has every right to think that the AFC is trying to threaten Malaysia.

It is just that the AFC had already made up its mind to relocate and any conditions they are making were just to ensure that Malaysia would not be able to meet it.

Why beat the issue? Let them relocate to weherver they want to. Malaysia has not gained anything in terms of development of the sport with the AFC headquarter being here.

The development of football in Malaysia is the task of the Malaysians and in this instance Malaysians have not been successful. Whether the AFC is based here or not is not going to change the scenario.

Ismail Sabri pointed out that the Badminton World Federation (BWF) did not demands like the AFC when they relocated to Kuala Lumpur.

This is not a great example as the relocation of the BWF was itself questionable. When the BWF was relocated to KL, the decision was already made that England would no longer be the base for the sport.

And if I am not mistaken Chelthneham when through the same issues like what KL is going through with the AFC now.

And don't forget there was a move to relocate the BWF to China. I am not privy to much of the details but the relocation of the BWF headquarters to China is still pretty much an idea that is alive.

Rumours?

2008-10-21T06:50:00.005+08:00

Rumours are that a senior coach of a mainstream sports made a trip to Europe recently not at the expense of the sports governing body. Instead the trip was fully paid for by the godfather for one of his charges.

And rumours are (I have been hearing about this for more than a year now) that the godfather was also a known bookie.

Don't watch this column for who that coach is. I really do not have the time to be a witness in any investigation.

Ask the mainstream reporters. A number of them also know but are also unwilling to write about it.

Does not translate to votes

2008-10-17T07:44:00.002+08:00

I was just informed by a little bird that the newspaper reports that seem to indicatev that KLHA was against the curent leadership of the MHF was misleading.

Apparently the KLHA council only endorsed the nomination of the two nominees because of request from their affiliate and also from one of the candidate.

It seems that KLHA has a policy of acceding to request from KLlites when they have no nominees of their own. It seems that Sapura requested for Ken to be nominated while Johnson wrote in directly requesting to be nominated.

I was also told that nominations does not necessarily mean that the KLHA would eventually vote for the candidates at the MHF AGM.

It is something like the UMNO nominations, the number of nominations candidates get dont normally translate to the number of votes they eventually get at the elections.

For my original post on this subject read here.

Glory Days?

2008-10-17T07:34:00.002+08:00

The Sports Minister Datuk Ismail Sabri Yaakob said in Parliament yesterday that the perception that Malaysian sports has lost its glory was not accurate and may only be due to the fact that the popular ones like football and hockey were in decline.

He went on to say that there were also other sports that were not so popular that Malaysia was good at, such as squash, karate, cycling and lawn bowling.

He cited the examples of Lee Chong Wei, Nicol David, Safuan Said and Siti Zalena Ahmad who are all ranked in the top two of the respective sports.

But does this mean that Malaysian sports is doing well in the international arena?

Take badminton for instance, Malaysia has been a powerhouse in the sport for many decades. But the last time we won the Thomas Cup was in 1992. We have never won a gold at the World Championships or the Olympics nor have we even managed to be in the final of the Sudirman Cup.

In squash, Nicol is about the only player who is doing well at the international arena. Ong Beng Hee and Mohamed Azlan are still struggling to eke out impressive results. And where is the next batch of back-up players?

Lawn bowls used to be a game for the older folks until countries like Malaysia decided to get young players (at least twice younger than traditional players) to play the game on a full time basis.

The problem with sports in Malaysia is actually diversified. One of it is the almost non existence of sports culture.

Sports like karate and taekwondo are continually churning out strong exponents not because of any government policy but because of the club format.

People take up martial arts as a form of exercise and this decades long trend has been instrumental for the development of the sport in Malaysia.

What we have is sports watching culture and that too is also confined to the EPL and when the Malaysians do well.

The sports policies of the last couple of decades has killed sports culture. I remember a former PM saying back in the early 1970s that sports was a waste of time. He rebranded himself as a sports developer by paying millions from the government coffers to bring major international sporting events to Malaysia.

And all this time, the basics of sports were neglected. Sports is still neglected in a majority of schools. Some schools still do not have a proper field for their sporting activities.

Except for selected schools a majority of schools do not have proper sports teachers.

Sports like hockey has been on a decline for at least two decades now because of the move by a majority of local councils to take away the opportunity of free playing areas.

Can you count the number of hockey pitches where people can actually go and hit the ball around. Three decades ago, many of us picked up the game because there were plenty of places where we could do this.

I will touch on this topic over the next few days.

Matter of Perception

2008-10-16T09:46:00.004+08:00

It has been almost a month since I last updated my blog and a number of friends were wondering whether I am still alive.

Funny they called me on the phone to check whether I am still alive.

Well I was in zombie land and still am, with a viral infection. Or is it voodoo powder.

Anyway, just as I thought it was time to write something again, I come across an interesting story in the NST today.

Former SapuraCrest Petroleum Bhd Chief Operating Officer Ken Pereira is entering the race to become the No 2 man at the Malaysian Hockey Federation (MHF) while running mate Johnson Fernandez, currently the copy editor of the Malay Mail, will contest for the secretary's post on Nov 1.

It comes to an interesting question of whether a newspaper man should be involved in a sports association as a key office bearer.

When I was a sports journalist in The Star many years back, my boss Ng Weng Tuck (or Angie as everyone knows him) was not happy with journalists holding positions in sports associations.

He was of the opinion that they would be impartial in their reports and can influence the neutrality of stories.

At that time, being a young punk as some of my fellow journalists used to call me, I was not in agreement. It was an issue of democratic right. Furthermore it was not a clause in our employment contracts.

I did become the Honorary Secretary of the Kabaddi Association of Malaysia soon after I left journalism and resigned from the position about four years ago.

During these times, I have come to find some truth in what my former boss had to say.

I know of at least of one journalist in the local industry who holds a key position in a sports association. And I know for a fact that the said journalist’s reporting on issue relating to the sports he is involved is shady and biased.

This is in no way that I am accusing that my former fellow journalist Johnson Fernandez would biased. But being in the field of journalism, it may create the perception.

It is no doubt that the years he had been a sports journalists and editor would give him an edge in some key areas. Furthermore he has served as key office bearer in various other associations.

But it will also be difficult for him to go up against an incumbent and also a former secretary (Param has also thrown in his hat into the field).

I know because I did challenge Johnson for the secretary’s post in the Sportswriters Association of Malaysia (SAM) many years ago.

It would be interesting to see who would prevail in the MHF elections. But whoever wins, I hope it would be for the betterment of the game.

Selamat Hari Raya!

2008-09-30T09:07:00.002+08:00

Wishing all you guys a SELAMAT HARI RAYA!

Positioning for positions

2008-09-26T08:14:00.001+08:00

I am back. Missed out on much that was happening in the sporting world over the last two weeks.

Came across an interesting topic that I think I should blog about.

Just how far would people go to ensure that their retain power in sports association?

The recent saga involving the top FAM officials and the fight between rival faction in taekwondo may just be the tip of the iceberg as far as politicking in Malaysian sports associations are concerned.

Forget about the power struggle in UMNO. Some of the stories that come out of Malaysian sports associations are even juicier.

There were rumours just a year ago, about a Datuk who apparently paid delegates to vote for him at the elections. He did win the presidency, despite being despised by his own sports fraternity.

And now there is another rumour making its rounds of how another Datuk is offering to pay RM300,000 a year for five years to be the president of another sports association.

That is a cool RM1.5 million.

The only condition it seems is that he wants three other elected officials to quit.

There is also another association where the secretary was kicked out and was replaced with the son of the deputy president.

Talk about nepotism!

News on the Malaysian politicians making their way for a study trip to Taiwan made headlines everywhere. But, how about the sports association that paid for its entire council for a trip to the Beijing Olympics. From what I have heard it was not entirely to watch the Beijing Olympics. The elections for this association is due early next year.

I met up with the president of a National Olympic Association (not Malaysia) a couple of years ago. I was accompanying a sports official from that country who had lodged complaints over some discrepancies in the association.

I was shocked by the response given by the Olympic official. He bluntly told that he would be unable to take any action on the matter until after his reelection as the president of the Olympic association was sorted out.

“I need their votes. He controls at least five votes. I can’t be taking action against him now and risk losing the votes,” he said.

Forget about the notion that people get into sports association for the love of sport. There are many who are genuinely interested in the development of sports.

But there are equal number of those who just want to be seen as holding position in a sports association to stoke their own ego and to enjoy the perks that comes with it.

Barely Back

2008-09-20T22:40:00.002+08:00

Just could not find the energy to blog for the past one week. No it is not because of any silent protest. It was because of this stinking viral fever that sapped all my energy.

First day without a fever in a week. Hopefully i can find something to talk about over the next few days.

Shit Happens!

2008-09-13T12:09:00.004+08:00

Plenty to rant about today. But I want to keep my peace. Just want to sit back and ponder on what's hapenning around us. Need to send this Lennon song to plenty of idiots around us.

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Review the Act

2008-09-10T09:01:00.003+08:00

The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) is unhappy with the move by the Sports Commissioners Office to amend the Sports Development Act of 1997.

OCM president Tunku Tan Sri Imran Tuanku Ja'afar is reported to have said that the Commissioner had not taken note of the proposals made by the OCM or had sought the input from the sports fraternity.

My take on the whole issue is simple. The first amendment that needs to be made to the Act is to rename it as the Sports Control Act.

There is nothing about development in the Act, it was merely bulldozed through by the Ministry to regulate their control over sports associations.

I was one of the few in the media, who had spoken up against the absolute powers that the Act gave to the Minister.

My view on the Act that was published in the back page of The Star was:

“There will be a new supremo in Malaysian sports. He shall be the judge, the jury and the executioner. And he shall be known as the Sports Minister”.

The powers given to the Minister by the Act was limitless so far as sports was concerned.

Yes we were all told that the powers would not be abused.

But, do take a look at the decisions made over the last decade involving various associations and you would see there has always been abuse of the basics of freedom of expression through sports.

In my opinion, the OCM itself was guilty in their selective opposition to the Act.

When the Malaysian Amateur Athletics Union (MAAU) was deregistered, the OCM chose not to assist their affiliate. But when the Malaysian Taekwondo Association (MTA) was deregistered, the OCM were up in arms against the Ministry.

The OCM, at least as far as I am concerned, surrendered their autonomy and rights when they failed to assist MAAU.

Just like back in 1996, the opinion of the sports fraternity is not going to sway the decision to amend the Act.

The problem has always been that a select group of people, who have no inkling of international sports conventions or how a sports associations actually works at the ground level, want to decide what is best for sports in this country.

I remember not too long ago, all national sports associations secretaries were called for a hastily arranged meeting in Genting Highlands. No agenda were given until everyone reached the venue.

We were all given a draft proposal on uniform constitution for association and were told to discuss among ourselves and give our input later in the afternoon.

While we were discussing the matter, the organisers went off to play a round of golf to celebrate a senior Ministry officials retirement.

Almost all of those who attended refused to give out input on such an important matter without first discussing the same within our own associations.

Nothing came out of the meeting after that and the proposal died there and there.

I would not be surprised if the latest amendments proposed by the Ministry was also the handiwork of similarly conducted meetings.

If the Act was for the development of sports than it should first be discussed thoroughly. Can’t it wait until the proposed Sports Convention?

Coming back again to whether the Act should be renamed the Sports Control Act, the Ministry should seriously look into what development of sports is all about.

These are just some of the issues that should be arrested:

1. Ensuring free sports facilities in all new housing projects with a minimum area being allocated for the purpose.
2. Ensuring that sports management was included as a compulsory subject in all teachers training colleges.
3. Ensuring that all government sports facilities were open for the public free of charge during weekends.
4. Ensuring that the school curriculum included compulsory and regulated sports studies. And why can’t we make sure that all our students have to undergo compulsory swimming lessons just as they do in Australia?
5. Ensuring that all sports associations get a minimum grant each year to conduct basic development work, including the hiring of an executive secretary, a full time development officer and a full time coach.
6. Ensuring that the participation of the national team in each sport in one selected major international each year was funded by the government.

I am sure you guys can come up with more to add on to the list.

Lets go clubbing

2008-09-08T08:47:00.001+08:00

Football clubs involved in the Malaysian League want to form their own association – the Association of Malaysian Football Clubs (AMFC) – and this is being opposed by state football associations.

The state associations have a big reason why they do not want to this to take place. That reason is the obvious loss of control or power that they wield over clubs.

But the clubs are also fully justified in wanting a body to look after their own interest.

These clubs spend as much money on their teams, sometimes more than what some of the states do.

Football is no longer an amateur sport and the structure of professional sports will see the emergence of clubs. This is a fact that state associations must accept.

The situation is not unique to football alone. Other sports would eventually face the same dilemma.

The age old dogma of state based sports associations need to be reviewed. I can name a number of sports where certain clubs were doing more for the development of the sport than the state associations they were affiliated to.

In more ways than one, it was the inept state associations that hindered the development of sport. These associations hide behind the constitutional powers they have been endowed with.

Worse still some of the national associations also do not like any changes to the set-up of their association and membership merely because it would threaten the election process of the association.

So any move by clubs to gain some form of autonomy is seen as a threat to how the electoral process takes place. The “politicians” in the association would now have to take care of additional delegates to ensure their continued survival in the association.

I believe that the whole issue of state and national level membership in Malaysian sports should be reviewed to include the emerging the status of clubs at national level.

States should concentrate on the development of the amateur sports with emphasis on grassroot development while the clubs can play the role of development of professional sport.

Coach victimised

2008-09-03T08:52:00.000+08:00

The turmoil in Sri Lankan badminton now has a Malaysian victim.

Malaysian Sankar Annamalai, who was hired by the Sri Lanka Badminton Association has been sacked without being paid for at least two months.

Apparently this is not because of any wrongdoing by the coach, but rather because of the internal politics.

Read more about it here.

The old horse still runs

2008-09-03T08:27:00.001+08:00

Veteran V. Selvam wins yet another tournament beating the best that Malaysia has to offer.

What is wrong with this story? Nothing, except for the fact that it could have been written in the 80’s, 90’s or the current decade.

That is how long Selvam has dominated the tennis scene.

Even when he was victimised by the Lawn Tennis Association of Malaysia (LTAM) back in the 1990’s, Selvam was still the best the country ever produced.

Yes, Selvam is better than Adam Malek.

Selvam was quoted by the NST that he can be the national champion for another 15 years.

This assumption from a 39-year-old just shows how pathetic the state of Malaysian tennis is in.

Not too long ago, a young national tennis player chose to quit the game after losing to Selvam.

His contention was that if he cannot beat an aging player, he cannot be competitive at the international level.

That player made a return to the game a short while later, but his contention is correct.

Malaysia has the potential to do well in tennis. Other Asian countries including Thailand, India and China are constantly showing that Asians can excel even at the highest level.

What is wrong with Malaysian tennis. One could just talk to some of the parents of the juniors and they would have plenty to say.

Sepak Takraw for Olympics

2008-08-28T08:52:00.005+08:00

So Malaysia have lost yet again to the Thais in the Kings Cup sepaktakraw championships.

Some things never change. But they should. I am not talking about Malaysia beating Thailand. I am talking about why sepaktakraw has not worked a better marketing plan to ensure that the sport gets into the Olympics.

It is certainly an exciting and visually enthralling for viewers. If beach volleyball can get into the Olympics why not sepaktakraw.

One of the biggest problem for the sport is the continuous bickering between the two powerhouses of the game - Thailand and Malaysia - at the international federation level.

So while they are busy fighting on whether to use rattan or plastic ball, the game does not get marketed as it needs to be.

I am not surprised to note that it has taken an Englishman - Peter Dearman - a teacher currently living in Taiwan - to start an online petition to the International Olympic Council to push for the includion sepaktakraw in the Olympics.

There is a grand number of one person who has signed the petition, Dearman himself.

The petition is not going to make heads turn at the IOC but still it could be used to gauge just how popular the sports is worldwide. After all the sport is already contested at both the SEA Games and the Asian Games.

You can sign the petition online here.

http://www.petitiononline.com/spktkrw/petition.html

Fidel speaks his mind

2008-08-28T08:21:00.003+08:00

We all have been told over and over again that politics and sports should not mix. We have been informed by the media of the oppression in countries like Cuba, North Korea and even China.

I have never been to any of these countries and cannot vouch for what really transpires there except for what I hear from others.

But I thought the following statement made by Fidel Castro was worth reading.

I am posting the full text here so that you can also make your own judgement on it.

Reflections of Fidel
What went unsaid about Cuba

I have carefully followed the Western media’s reaction to my Sunday reflections on the Olympic Games in China. Actually, rather sensitive events were overlooked while others were highlighted ad libitum by the advocates of world plunder and exploitation.

Let’s see:

"Fidel Castro today blamed the judges and the Mafia for the poor performance of the Cuban delegation at the Olympic Games. He also justified the Cuban tae kwon do athlete Angel Volodia Matos, who was permanently suspended after kicking a referee in the head, and expressed his full solidarity with him."

"The former Cuban President called on Monday to make a deep analysis of sports in Cuba. He also expressed his solidarity with an athlete who was permanently suspended together with his coach for assailing a judge."

"Castro manifested his full solidarity with the tae kwon do athlete permanently suspended for attacking a referee and a judge."

"Castro in solidarity with the Cuban tae kwon do athlete permanently suspended for aggression."

There is a long list of similar sentences. This was the prevailing line of information. I didn’t expect otherwise. I was doomed, the same as the Cuban boxers in the face of bribed referees and judges, and I knew what would be publicized.

As was to be expected, not a word was published about hunger, undernourishment, lack of medicines, sport gear and facilities suffered by 80% of the countries competing there.

I praised the merit of the country that organized the last Olympic Games. I did not hesitate to recognize the extraordinary qualities of the successful athletes. I appreciated the joy, the passion and the human feelings conveyed to millions of people by those who won medals. I specially appreciated the message of peace embodied by the Olympic Games, in the face of the endless carnage, devastation, genocide and real threat of extermination sustained by the human species every day.

What went unsaid about Cuba:

1. It is the only country where professional sport is not practiced.

2. It is the only country that years ago established a grand International School of Sports and Physical Education at the higher level, the same that has graduated thousands of youths from Third World countries and which presently accommodates 1500 students absolutely free of charge.

3. It is the only country in which its high-performance athletes study free of charge to become professors of Sports and Physical Education and which has graduated thousands of people in that specialty in higher education centers. These are now working with children, teenagers, youths and people of all ages. Many of them are also working in Third World countries as collaborators, sometimes free of charge and in some cases for a minimum fee. This way they have made a contribution to the international development of sports

4. It is the only country, among those participating in the Beijing Olympics, which is economically blockaded by the most powerful and richest empire that ever existed.

5. It is also the only country, among all those same participants, to which an Adjustment Act is applied, that, in addition to its bloody fruits, facilitates and encourages the theft of Cuban athletes.

6. Our country has devoted a specialized hospital to care for the health of high-performance athletes.
The truth cannot be hidden under the anesthesia and the fireworks of the Olympic Games.

In Barcelona 1992, in full Special Period, Cuba took fifth place for gold medals.

In the most recent Games we still obtained a total of 24 medals; that is gold, silver and bronze – a higher number than any other country in Latin America and the Caribbean.

We should not hesitate to objectively analyze our sports activity and to prepare for future contests. But, I repeat, we should not forget that "in London we shall find European chauvinism, corrupt referees, the buying of muscles and brains, a price too high to pay, and a strong dose of racism."

As I write these lines I remember that a cyclone, Fay, paid a visit to us in the middle of the Olympics. Yesterday, coinciding with the arrival of most of our delegation, we got news that another tropical storm was heading straight for the eastern provinces. Today it is stronger, and its projected course even more dangerous. We need to strengthen not only our bodies but our spirits, too.

We are lucky to have a Revolution! It is a fact that nobody will be forgotten. If lives were lost, they would not be in the hundreds or thousands, as was the case in Santa Cruz del Sur on November 9, 1932, due to a tidal wave, and on October 3, 1963, due to Hurricane Flora which flooded the heartland of the provinces east of Cuba. At that time we had no regulatory reservoirs like those of today, which are moreover, sources of irrigation and running water. A strong, energetic and farsighted Civil Defense system protects our people and provides more security in the face of disasters than in the United States. However, every possible danger must be anticipated.

Neither should we be resting n our laurels. The growing frequency and intensity of these natural phenomena demonstrates that the climate is changing due to the faults of humanity. These times demand ever-increasing dedication, steadiness and conscience. It doesn’t matter if the opportunists and traitors also benefit without contributing anything to the safety and wellbeing of our people.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 26, 2008
5:34 p.m.

This is the article that Fidel wrote in the first instance immediately after the Olympics.

Reflections of Fidel

A gold medal for honor

IF one were to statistically work out the number of facilities, sport fields and sophisticated pieces of equipment we just saw in the recently concluded Olympic Games, accessible to every one million of the world's inhabitants; the number of swimming pools for diving and polo, artificial underfoot for track and field competitions or field hockey, basketball and volleyball courts, rapids for kayak races, cycle tracks for speed-bike races, firing ranges, and so on and so forth, one could conclude that they are beyond the reach of 80 percent of the countries that were represented in Beijing, which is equivalent to billions of people around the planet. China, an immense and millennia-old country with over 1,2 billion inhabitants, invested $40 billion in the construction of the Olympic facilities and it will still require time to satisfy the sporting needs of a society at the height of development.

If one calculates the total number of people living in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries, not to mention the world's nearly 900 million Africans and more than 550 million Latin Americans, one will have an idea of the number of people around the world who have no access to these kinds of sport facilities.

It is in this light that we ought to analyze the news that surrounded the Olympic Games in Beijing.

The world enjoyed the Olympics because it was something it needed, because we wanted to see the smiles and emotions of the athletes who participated, particularly those who came in first place, whose perseverance and discipline were duly acknowledged.

Which one of them could be blamed for the colossal inequalities that exist in the world in which it is our lot to live? How can one forget, on the other hand, the hunger, malnutrition, lack of schools, teachers, hospitals, doctors, medications and basic means of sustenance that the world endures?

We are aware of what those who pillage and exploit the world we live in evidently want. Why did they unleash violence and make the risk of war more imminent, on the same day that the Olympic Games were inaugurated? That happened only 16 days ago.

Now, when the anesthesia has worn off, the world must again face its distressing and growing problems.

Some days ago, I wrote about Cuban sports. I had long been condemning the repulsive, mercenary-like maneuvers perpetrated against this revolutionary activity and writing in defense of the courage and honorable conduct of our athletes.

In the course of the competitions, I reflected on these matters. Perhaps I would not have decided to write something on the issue so soon if there had not been the incident involving the Cuban tae kwon do athlete, Angel Valodia Matos, Olympic champion in Sydney eight years ago. His mother died when he was competing there and winning a gold medal, 20,000 kilometers away from his country. Taken aback by a decision that struck him as utterly unfair, he protested and threw a kick in the direction of the referee. They had tried to buy off his trainer. He was already ill-disposed and angry. He couldn't hold back his anger.

The athlete was used to bravely endure the lesions that frequently arise in a tae kwon do match. The referee suspended him during the match when he was winning 3-2. It wasn't the only incident. In these types of matches, the referee has all the power and the athlete has none. The two Cubans, the tae kwon do athlete and trainer, were barred for life from participating in international competitions.

I saw when the referees shamelessly robbed two Cuban boxers of their victory during the semifinals. Our boxers put up a dignified and courageous fight, they were constantly on the offensive. They had their hopes set on winning, in spite of the referees. But to no avail: their fate had been sealed beforehand. I didn't see Correa's fight, where he was also robbed of his victory.

I feel no duty to remain silent about the deeds of this mafia. The latter has managed to make a mockery of the Olympic Committee rules. What they did to the young members of our boxing team, to complete the work of those who make a living out of stealing Third World athletes, was criminal. In their malice, they denied Cuba even one Olympic gold medal in this discipline.

Cuba has never bought an athlete or referee. There are sports in which referees are very corrupt and our athletes have to fight both the adversary and the referee. Cuban boxers, whose prestige is internationally recognized, have had to face bribery and corruption attempts aimed at violently snatching gold medals from the country, at buying highly trained and experienced boxers, as they try to do in the case of baseball players and other prominent athletes.

The Cuban athletes who competed in Beijing and, instead of gold medals, brought home silver or bronze medals or any kind of acknowledgment are to be commended as representatives of amateur sports, which rekindled the Olympic movement. They are without parallel in the world.

What dignity they showed during the competitions!

Professional athletics were introduced into the Olympics because of commercial interests which turned sports and athletes, as we've said, into mere commodities.

Cuba's Olympic baseball team showed an exemplary conduct. In Beijing, they twice defeated the U.S. selection, the country that invented that sport which, because of the commercial interests of big companies, was excluded from the Olympics. This year, 2008, is, for now, its last in the Olympics.

The final match against South Korea was dubbed the tensest and most extraordinary that the Olympics have ever known. The game was decided in the last inning, with three Cubans on base and an out.

The adversary's professional baseball players were like batting machines. They had a left-handed pitcher who threw varied speed balls with surgical precision. An excellent team. Cubans do not practice the sport for profit. They are trained, as all our athletes are, to serve their country. Were this not the case, the country, small in size and of limited resources, would lose them forever. It would be impossible to calculate the value of the recreational and educational services they offer the nation in the course of their lives, in all provinces and the Isle of Youth.

In volleyball, Cuba's team defeated the U.S. selection in the qualifying round. They had been climbing from the lowest end of a more than 50-rung ladder. Even though they returned with no medals, this is a feat that will go down in history.

After a difficult match against a Russian rival, Mijaín proudly won Cuba’s first gold medal in the discipline.

Dayron Robles won the gold by a wide margin. The rain had soaked the brand-new track. Without the rain, he could have easily broken the Olympic record, let alone the world record he had set weeks earlier in the difficult 110-meter hurdles, which requires pinpoint accuracy. He is a disciplined and tenacious 21-year-old with nerves of steel.

Yoanka González won Cuba's first Olympic cycling medal.

Leonel Suárez, who won a bronze medal in the decathlon, will turn 21 in September. The results obtained in each of the 10 competitions in their extremely difficult sports are indeed impressive.

There are many athletes of great merit, men and women I cannot mention here but who cannot be forgotten.

More than 150 athletes from our small island participated in the 2008 Olympics and put up a fight in 16 of 28 sport disciplines there.

Our country does not practice chauvinism or commercialize sports, which are as sacred as the people’s education and health. What it practices, rather, is solidarity. Years ago, it created a Physical Education and Sports Training School, with capacity for more than 1,500 students from the Third World. With that same spirit of solidarity, it celebrates the triumph of the Jamaican sprinters, who won six gold medals, the Panamanian jumper who won a gold medal, the Dominican boxer that won the same medal or that of the Brazilian volleyball players who dealt a crushing defeat to the U.S. team and came in first.

In addition to this, thousands of Cuban sports trainers have worked in Third World countries.

These merits do not exempt us in the least from assuming present and future responsibilities. In world sporting competitions, for the reasons we pointed out, a qualitative leap has taken place. We no longer live in the time in which we managed to become the world's first in gold medals per inhabitant in relatively little time, and that isn’t going to happen again, of course.

We account for around 0.07 % of the world’s population. We cannot be strong in all sports like the United States, which has at least 30 times our population. We cannot have access to even 1 % of the facilities and different types of equipment that they possess, nor avail ourselves of the varied climates they have. The same holds for the rest of the rich world, which has at least twice as many inhabitants as the United States does. They account for around one billion inhabitants.

The fact that more nations are competing and competitions are now tougher attests, in part, to Cuba's victory as an example to the rest of the world. But we are resting on our laurels. Let us be honest and recognize this, all of us. It doesn’t matter what our enemies are saying. Let us be serious about this. Let us go over every discipline, every human and material resource we devote to sports. We must analyze this deeply, apply new ideas, concepts and knowledge. We must distinguish between what is done for the sake of our citizens’ health and what is done for the sake of competing and making this instrument more accessible for the wellbeing and health of everyone. We could abstain from competing outside the country and the world would not end because of this. I think the best course of action is to compete both inside and outside the country, to face all difficulties and make better use of all human and material resources available.

Let us prepare ourselves for important future battles. Let us not be taken in by London’s smiles. There, we will find European chauvinism, corrupt referees, the buying of muscle and brains (an incalculable loss) and a strong dose of racism.

Let no one even dream that London will achieve the level of safety, discipline and enthusiasm that we saw in Beijing. One thing is certain: there will be a Conservative government that is perhaps less belligerent than the current one.

Let us not forget the decency, honesty and professional prestige enjoyed by our international referees and internationalist sport workers.

All of our solidarity accompanies the tae kwon do athlete and his trainer. For those who are returning today, the ovation of all Cubans.

Let us give a warm welcome to our Olympic athletes in all parts of the country. Let us extol their dignity and their merits. Let us do for them everything in our power.

A gold medal for honor!

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 24, 2008
9:05 p.m.
Translated by ESTI

Lottery Funding, Anyone?

2008-08-27T08:44:00.002+08:00

Australia is looking into the possibility of creating a national lottery to fund their Olympics programme.

British sports receive $441 million a year and is expected to receive a further $125 million under a change to the National Lottery proposed by Britain's Conservatives yesterday. The National Lottery was introduced in UK in 1994.

This is something which reminds me why Sports Toto was named so in Malaysia.
Sports Toto was incorporated in 1969 as a state-owned outfit. It used to fund sports in a big way.

Sports Toto was privatised in 1985. Just wondering how much is being spent by Sports Toto for sports development now.

Should they still use the word “Sports” in their name?

Talking about gaming companies, I am sure some of you may remember of how another gaming company was issued special draws to fund a Malaysian racing driver.

Isn’t it time for the Malaysian government to also look into the possibility of expanding such initiatives?

I know there is the religious stigma, but if we allow gambling to a section of the population, we should also be able to use the same to fund the sports development of the same section of the population.

Those of you who are old enough would still remember the Welfare Tickets. Used to fund welfare programmes in the country. Now it is the Big Sweep, funding the welfare of the owners now.

Fake Gold

2008-08-26T09:53:00.000+08:00

The NST reports that the National Sports Council has plans to hire foreign athletes to help in its bid for medals at the 2012 London Olympics.

NSC director-general Datuk Zolkeples Embong was quoted as saying that there was nothing wrong in adopting foreign athletes so long as locals were not neglected.

There are merits in bringing foreign athletes to help improve the Malaysian athletes.

But so far, I don’t see any benefits in this direction. Yuan Yufang did not help to improve Malaysian walkers. Neither did Irina Maharani help the shooters.

The Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) brought in some Chinese women shuttlers not long ago and that too did not help matters.

I see only one reason why the NSC wants to bring in foreign talents – for the bragging rights of getting Malaysia their first Olympic gold medal.

Foreign footballer and hockey players have not helped the fortunes of our national teams.

Are we so desperate for recognition? Is an Olympic gold medal so important in our social and cultural development?

Do we really need these “guns for hire” or “mercenaries” to ensure we get a medal at the Olympics.

This is exactly like how we spent millions just to brag that we have the Malaysia’s first astronaut.

What is wrong in not getting the Olympic gold medal? I would rather wait and see actual development of sports in the country and the cultivation of proper sports culture in country before we get the first Olympic gold.

It is not to say that Malaysians would not be able to do it in London four years from now.

Badminton would still be a bet to end the drought. With proper guidance we may have a cyclist or a taekwondo exponent or an archer with an equal chance of getting the gold in London.

Let us spend the resources in getting our own athletes ready for the Olympics instead of taking a short cut.

Honourable way out should stop

2008-08-26T09:30:00.000+08:00

The Malaysian Amateur Athletics Union (MAAU) is embroiled in another alleged sexual harassment case.

NST and Berita Harian reports that six national athletes have lodged a complaint with the National Sports Council as well as the MAAU president.

It is good to see that the NSC is quick to look into the alleged problem.

But I am also wondering whatever happened to the case of the sexual harassment that saw a senior staff being asked to resign from the FAM.

Hopefully, that in the current case was confirmed, the remedy would not be just a mere request for the official to resign.

This Malaysian habit of allowing officials to get the so called “honourable” way out by resigning should stop.

The Devil in Angel

2008-08-24T09:27:00.001+08:00

Cuban taekwondo exponent Angel Valodia Matos saw a moment of indiscretion turning him into the devil at the Beijing Olympics.

I was shocked as should have been the millions around the world, who saw Matos land a kick in the head of Swedish referee Chakir Chelbat after being disqualified from his quarter-final bout against Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov.

The World Taekwondo Federation immediately slapped a lifetime ban on the Sydney Olympics gold medalist.

What Angel did was wrong but it was reaction that many would have made in the same situation.

I am not justifying Angel’s reaction but I strongly believe it was a culmination of the poor decision made by the referee.

Angel was ready just a fraction of a second after a 60 second injury time out had lapsed. Chakir had the discretion to allow the match to go on but chose to disqualify the Cuban immediately.

This is exactly what is wrong with subjective sports.

Britain’s Sarah Stevenson summed it up nicely with her statement that the judges could do whatever they want.

Sarah saw poor decision robbing her of a quarter-final win against China’s Chen Zhong. Unlike Angel, she chose to make an appeal and for the first time in its history the jury reversed the judges’ decision and awarded her the win.

I have witnessed numerous times before of how the referees robbed athletes of their deserved wins.

I have seen an Indonesian coach fed-up with the biased decisions made by the referee, throwing a chair into the competition mat.

I have seen the Malaysians singing the Negaraku during the prize presentation to a Singaporean exponent, as a sign of protest against the poor refereeing decision.

I have seen taekwondo officials happily confirming who would win the medals even before a single bout had taken place.

I am all for Angel being banned for life, but what will be the action against the referee?

While talking about taekwondo at the Olympics, I also do not concur with their ruling that only allows a country to field four exponents. The ruling was made to prevent powerhouses Korea from dominating the competition.

This is hogwash, especially considering that China is monopolising the table tennis competition.

I thought the Olympics is about fielding the best. But it seems that the taekwondo competition is anything but fair.

Get a life IOC

2008-08-23T09:46:00.004+08:00

The International Olympic Council (IOC) President Jacques Rogge was so concerned about the sportsmanship or in his perception the lack of itr shown by newly crowned Olympic speedster Usain Bolt.

You can cheat by fielding underaged athletes and the IOC will take days and constant criticism from the media before they make a stand.

You can receive complaints from teams that their rivals have been spying on them and the IOC can turn the other way.

You can drop an athlete from participating at the Olympics with a trumped up charge and the IOC can afford to just let it go by.

But if you celebrate your victory, the IOC gets angry.

You can have your National Olympic Committe president abducted and the IOC can pretend it never took place.

The Iraqi Olympic Committte chairman Ahmed al-Sammarai was abducted two years ago and is still missing and there seems to be no pressure from the IOC to the Iraqi government.

Read about the abduction here.

Ahmed's wife has also created a website to garner support in her quest to find here husband at http://www.alsamarrai13.org/.

What a Joke

2008-08-21T08:41:00.001+08:00

I was reading this story at SportingNews.com about Softball’s push to get itself reinstated into the Olympics.

Guess all of you know that Softball has been dropped from the next Olympics.

That was not what caught my interest in the story.

It was this particular line:

But the IOC member from Malaysia who showed up Monday had never seen the sport before.

I am interested in knowing who this joke of an IOC member from Malaysia.

How the hell was this member picked as representative of the IOC from Malaysia.

The Malaysian Softball Association has been a member of the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) since 1978.

And the president of the association – Low Beng Choo - is also the vice president of the (OCM).

If this guy ( I presume it is not Ms Low) has not even seen a game played by the OCM’s affiliate, he has no fxxxxxx business representing Malaysia at the IOC.

More Datuks Please

2008-08-21T08:24:00.001+08:00

So Lee Chong Wei is set to be conferred the Datukship for his silver medal exploits at the Beijing Olympics.

This comes on the heels of another Penangite – Nicol David – being conferred the title.

The question that many ask now is whether it was just too early for either of these sports personalities to be conferred the title.

My answer is – Why Not?

We have seen lesser achievements being appreciated with Datukships in Malaysia.

If the chap who swam across the English Channel deserved a Datukship, why not an athlete who had excelled at the Olympics?

It is a common saying in Malaysia that if you throw a stone into a Malaysian crowd, chances are you would hit a Datuk.

For far too long, Datukships have been given for political and business reasons. I am happy to note that at least now we see those who excel in their own fields, other than politics and business, were being honoured when they are still young.

It has always been the case of them being too young to be conferred the title. While you can see politicians and businessmen in their early 30s being conferred the Datukship, I have never come across any sports personality being conferred the title until after he or she was past 50.

Still, I was happy to note that another badminton great – Ng Boon Bee – finally being conferred the Datukship earlier this year.

There are many other sportsmen who deserve the Datukship for their contribution to sports.

Penang has started the ball rolling and perhaps it is time for the other states to start honouring their sports stars too.

Scandal of the Ages

2008-08-15T07:39:00.002+08:00

The Chinese stormed to the womens team gymnastics title at the Beijing Olympics. But was their win legitimate?

There were many questions on whether the Chinese gymnasts were underaged. The Olympic rules specify that gymnasts must be at least 16.

Chinese officials had presented official passports to confirm that all their gymnasts were indeed above 16. But new documents have surfaced to the contrary.

The documents are posted here.

It seriously raises the question on the morality of the Games.

Three in a row for KL Club

2008-08-11T11:30:00.003+08:00

Ok! I admit it! This is just self propaganda.

Kuala Lumpur’s Sri Devi Kabaddi Club defeated arch rivals Sivasangkari of Selangor for their third men’s team title at the KL Open Kabaddi Championships at the Dataran Merdeka yesterday.

Seri Garing won the women’s title after edging Sri Devi and Seri Manjari in a round robin competition. Seri Garing’s S. Gomathi was also picked as the Best Women’s Player.
The men’s final between the top two clubs in the country turned out to be a thriller that was expected.

The first half was evenly fought with both teams playing a highly tactical game.

It was Sivasangkari that took the early initiative. Their defense was impeccable and solid raiding by their lead raider A. Anantharaju saw the side taking a 5-3 lead.

However, Sivasangkari started playing too cautiously and paid the price by losing two successive points. The first half ended with both teams tied 7-7.

Sivasangkari came back strongly in the second half with their tight defense. They raced to a 12-7 lead and looked like they were going to race away with the title.

But, the Sri Devi side, comprising of several players from the KL Sukma side that won the gold earlier this year, started playing more cohesively.

With their lead raiders – former national player M. Paramasiven and skipper K. Siva – finally getting into their rhythm, Sri Devi quickly erased the deficit.

Former national junior P. Vimalenthiran played a sterling role in the defence to swing the edge back to Sri Devi.

Sri Devi’s P. Dharmenthiran accounted for crucial defensive catches in the match and was awarded the Best Men’s Player for his role.

Once Sri Devi tied the score at 12-12, there was no stopping them. They went to rake in points after points against a suddenly fragile Sivasangkari team.

Sri Devi ended up winning the match by a comfortable 34-17 margin.

The men’s competition saw 17 teams from Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Perak, Pahang and Negri Sembilan taking part.

Both Sri Devi A and Sivasangkari emerged unbeaten in their round robin league matches to qualify for the quarter-finals.

In the quarter-finals, Sri Devi A received a walkover from their counterparts Sri Devi B while Sivasangkari were dominant against the Indian expatriate team of Power Tech.

The other quarter-finals saw Bukit Pelandok surprising the more experienced Perak while MIG Sentosa easily defeated Kelab Damansara.

In the semi-finals, Sivasangkari defeated Bukit Pelandok while Sri Devi defeated MIG Sentosa.

Manipur Standstill

2008-08-09T10:07:00.000+08:00

The state of Manipur in India is in a standstill because of the Olympics.

And it is not because the entire state is glued to the television watching the Olympics live. It is because of the general strike by various Manipur organizations, protesting the last minute exclusion of their weightlifter Monika Devi from the Olympics.

Less than an hour before the weightlifter was to have boarded a plane to Beijing, she was banned from the Games by the Sports Authority of India and the Indian Olympic Association.

Monika is alleged to have failed a now disputed doping test. Ironically Monika is said to have been tested at least 30 times in the past 18 months and she had passed all.

Whether the new test was conducted according to procedure or not, the whole affair is now a major political issue.

I am not in a position on saying who is right, but I must certainly say that the people of Manipur are passionate about their own sports personalities.

I doubt this will ever happen in Malaysia where the people stand up for the rights of an individual sports personality.

Wrong move.

2008-08-08T21:55:00.001+08:00

On a day when the world’s best athletes gathered for the showcase sporting event in Beijing, we get the news at home that seems contrary to the Olympic spirit.

It seems that five states – Penang, Selangor, Perak, Kedah and Kelantan – were excluded from the SUKMA council meeting held on July 15.

Selangor Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, Penang's Lyndia Ong Kok Fooi, Kedah's Hamdan Mohamad Khalid, Perak's Seah Leong Peng and Kelantan's Abdul Fattah Mahmood have released a joint statement on the matter.

Malaysiakini reports that the five states expressed regret that the ministry had smeared sporting activities with politics and said the minister had a moral obligation to inform them of the meeting and its deliberations.

I am not entirely sure whether the Sukma board also includes the state exco members in charge of sports. But I am sure that the state sports council heads are members.

Did these sports council heads attend the meeting? And if they did, it is their duty to report back to the state government.

Over the past few months, Malaysian leaders have been condemning the Tibetan Olympic protest against China. We were all told that politics and sports should not mix.

And here we are mixing politics and sports right at home. A great start to the Olympics.

Read my earlier take on Olympics and Politics here.

Going Brit

2008-08-08T08:50:00.001+08:00

Malaysia’s first – and only – first-class cricketer, Arul Suppiah, 24, may soon be a British citizen.

That would mean that he can choose to play for England if selected. He was indeed selected for the England Under-19 but had to forgo the chance as he was not holding a British passport.

Read more about this talented youngster here.

Put the FUN back in sports

2008-08-07T08:46:00.000+08:00

The Sports Minister Datuk Ismail Sabri announced that the ministry was likely to concentrate on sports that required skills as opposed to physique.

I am a little bit confused by this. At fist glance I thought that the minister now wants Malaysians to play sports like chess, darts, archery, even monopoly and congkak.

But as I read on his comments he cited badminton as an example. Does this mean that tennis is also considered as a strictly skill sports?

Anyway, let’s start eliminating the sports that fall under the physique category according to the minister’s statement.

Basketball, boxing, football, hockey, judo, taekwondo and wrestling requires direct contact with opponents. So these sports will be out.
Athletics, volleyball, canoe, cycling, fencing, handball, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing swimming, tennis, triathlon, waterpolo and weightlifting needs physical advantage. They will also be out.

Baseball and softball are on the way out of the Olympics and we can also discount them.

That leaves us with diving, equestrian, gymnastics, synchronized swimming, archery, badminton, shooting, and table tennis.

So the minister thinks that Malaysians will excel in these Olympic sports if the proper development plan is put in place.

These sort of sports engineering is not going to work in Malaysia and most countries. It might work if you are another China, where their system of sports domination takes the fun out of sports.

I don’t think that the Sports Ministry should be concerned about how the Malaysians fare at the Olympics at this point of time.

I also think that the Malaysian sports fraternity should first look into reviving the sports culture in Malaysia.

Too much concentration is being put on elite development that Malaysians are no longer a true sporting nation.

Last week, New York chose to include double-dutch in schools with a varsity sports status. This is not because of the need to get an Olympic medal but to ensure that their youngsters pick up sports.
Very little is being done in Malaysia to cultivate sports participation at the grassroot level for fun and healthy reasons.

Everything about sports development in Malaysia is about excellence. Everything is about competitions and winning them.

Let us take a step back. We should encourage our children to take up sports for the fun of it not because we want them to one day win an Olympic gold.

It is only when you take the fun out of sports, that we are inundated with a myriad of problems.

Children stop playing sports because they are afraid to lose. They stop playing sports because they are made fun of, heckled and jeered by the better players.

What we are in Malaysia are in fact a society of sports watchers. The number of Malaysian playing sports is dropping and the number of armchair sports fans are increasing.

Our plans now should be on how to get more and more Malaysians get physical. They need to get out and run and tumble and kick the ball, and hit the shuttle and swim and do sports for fun.

Put the F-U-N back into sports and the results will eventually come.

Goodbye Brother!

2008-08-03T11:59:00.002+08:00

When my handphone rang in the early hours of the morning today, I was certain of what the news was going to be.

I knew instantly that my good friend – Muthukumaran – has been called to gods abode.

It took me a couple of minutes to compose myself and I realised that I had not lost a friend but a good brother.

I had spoken to him just last Friday and he was telling me that he was confident that he could fight off the cancer for a couple more years. I saw him yesterday and he was still showing his fighting qualities.

After he was first diagnosed with the disease, he told me that wants at least another 10 years so that he can fulfill some of his ambitions.

I never did ask him what his ambitions were, but one thing I know for sure is that he had achieved plenty by being a good friend and great human being.

We first met on that sunny day back in 1971 at the St Joseph’s Primary School. It has been a 37 year friendship that has been filled with so many good memories.

Those memories made me realise that we have not lost him after all. Muthu will always be with me and with all those who have known, making us happy with the memories. I am sure this will be the same with his loving wife Carol.

He had touched each of us who knew him with his jovial and easy going mannerism.

Over the last couple of hours I have been thinking about him and all I could remember were the good times we had first as schoolmates, as colleagues at work, as social workers with the Red Crescent Society and as guys just hanging out and having a beer or two.

For those, who knew him from school, he will always be remembered as a naturally talented sportsman. He could play any game with such poise that I cannot remember a game that he did not excel in school.

He was my captain in the St Joseph’s hockey team and played leading roles in the football, hockey and even the athletics teams. He took up golf when he started working and turned out to be equally good at it.

You could say that he was school jock, but not in the traditional mold. He was someone who was always a friend to anyone.

Muthu stayed not too far away from my house, and a group of us are used to walking back home from school daily. But we never really did go back home immediately after school. We will stay back at school and play such games as Chapte and Belon Acah until the sun sets.

But I also remember him for how he would sneak a quick stick of cigarette, or what we used to call stamina sticks, during match breaks. Or how he and his fellow partners in crime used to hide cigarettes in the school sports room. And how there will be a chimney of smoke coming out of the sports room during school recess.

I still remember on how his entire classroom classmates pointed him out when the headmaster wanted to find out who smokes, although almost half the class were culprits too.

Muthu was my deputy in the Students Council and the Tamil Language Society. I still remember him telling me good heartedly that I was better than him only in the sport of politics.

Throughout the almost four decades I knew him, we hardly had any misunderstanding. The only time, I remember that I was pissed with him was when he failed to invite me to his wedding.

I had relocated to Kuala Lumpur and he could not contact me, but that did not stop me from giving him a royal screwing when we met up during the Thaipusam procession.

I cannot really be angry with the guy, who saved me from drowning during one of our outings at the Tioman Island.

We both bought our first motorbikes hardly a few weeks apart. I still remember him lecturing me for not taking the bike for prayers to the temple like had done just a couple of weeks earlier. A couple of weeks later, it was he who met in a minor accident and it was my turn to lecture him.

I also remember on how he was stopped by the policeman for riding his neighbour’s bike. The bike had no road tax or insurance and he did not have a licence either. He told the policeman “Tolonglah tuan.” And the policeman told him “Apa tolong! Chunni Tolong!

In the end it took his neighbour who was a retired policeman to sort things out.

Another funny incident was when we all went to watch Endless Love at the old Rex Cinema, where my late father used to work.

When we entered the cinema hall, Muthu noticed that his brother was also in the hall. We settled down in our seats to watch the movie as more people started tricking in. Muthu then nudged me and said that the bald headed guy who just entered looks very familiar to him. And lo! It turned out to be his dad. We were tickled by the fact that three members of the same family were watching the same movie.

We were both officers in the Malaysian Red Crescent Society and a group of five of us used to call ourselves Jackson Five Satu Sesat. Four of us were Indians and the last guy, Khalid, a Malay lad was the Sesat in the group.

I still laugh at another incident when we were all involved in the selection of the Guard Of Honours for the societies anniversary. Muthu put on such a show of a stern officer that one of the students got so frightened that he peed in his pants.

My first girl friend was a Catholic and Muthu did everything to make fun of me saying that my mom would kill me for the inter-faith affair. He used to hum the tune from the old Tumpuan Minggu show from RTM and do a quick impersonation of the newscaster reading the news of my impending marriage.

In the end it was he who went through an inter-faith marriage. When asked of this, he would say that his mom had set him 20 rules on whom to marry and he had only broken one by not marrying a Hindu girl.

A few of us, including Muthu used to be the only guys who used to go to Marrybrown not to eat their chicken but to have beers. I still have great memories of our beer drinking sessions in places like Wagonneer, Jade Terrace, Wato Inn and the old Government Rest House.

The last I had a drink with him was a month ago. He only had orange juice but we still found time to talk about old times. I will miss those sessions.

There are just so many good memories about him that I could go on writing about it.

He has been a dear friend and I am proud to have known him for all this years.

Goodbye my brother! You will be missed but you will never be forgotten.

We will meet up again and share another drink.

Get Well Soon

2008-08-01T12:07:00.002+08:00

Former Malaysian badminton singles coach Indra Gunawan is said to be suffering from cancer and currently undergoing treatment in Singapore.

Gunawan also coached the Indonesian team and joined the KLRC not too long ago.

Uniform constitution

2008-07-30T07:50:00.000+08:00

The Tanzanian government wants to introduce uniform constitutions for all of its national sports associations.

A review done by their Sports Ministry indicated that weak and ambiguous constitutions were a source of leadership wrangles.

With the introduction of uniform constitutions, they plan to stem conflicts and bickering within sports associations and clubs.

There were similar plans by the Malaysian Sports Ministry a couple of years ago, but, the plans never materialized.

Will uniform constitution be an answer to the poor management of sports associations?

The answer is a big NO.

Even the best of constitution would not help improve management skills.

You are left with two scenarios.

The first is inept leadership.

I can take a bet that if all of the existing sports administrators are asked to sit for a test to gauge their knowledge of their respective sports constitution, a vast majority of them will fail miserably.

About the only issue that they would all be masters at, would be how the election process works.

The second scenario would be the small group of lawyer wannabes whose knowledge of the constitution is so strong that they are able to manipulate those who fall into the previous group.

This is not to say that there are no good leaders. It is just that the good leaders are often outgunned by the sports politicians.

I am sure many of you remember how the Sports Commissioners Office handled the issue of the deregistration of the Malaysian Amateur Athletics Union (MAAU).

The MAAU was deregistered based on the notion that it was ineffective in the development of the sport. The constitution was changed in an attempt to remove certain office bearers, who had fell out of favour with some powerful parties.

But it took just another cycle for the same office bearers to come back and reclaim their position.

Changing the constitution would not work, without a total change in the entire set-up, down to the state and club levels.

And such changes must be made without fear or favour. It should not be done at the whims and fancies of those capable of doing it.

I always felt that the MAAU was victimised, when there were dozens of other associations which, even today are poorly run.

Shape up or ship out.

2008-07-29T08:47:00.001+08:00

The Utusan Malaysia reports today that Malaysian National Cycling Federation (MNCF) has left it to the National Sports Council (NSC) to decide on the choice of the national cycling coach.

MNCF president Abu Samah Wahab was quoted as saying that this was the best considering that the MNCF exco was divided on whom to select between Swiss John Jolidon and Australian Graeme Sears for the job.

Wow! What a great leadership decision.

The MNCF might as well close shop and hand over the task of managing the sport to the NSC.

If the MNCF, being the governing body for cycling in the country, are not even capable of making a decision on their coaching set-up, they don’t deserve to be the governing body.

Has the MNCF forgotten that it is their role to govern the sport. The NSC has a completely different role in the development of sport in the country.

I agree that the NSC pays for the salary of the coach, but the NSC is not entrusted with the role of selecting coaches.

It is the role of the sports federation to come out with their development plan and with it the support staffs that they want to ensure the plan was successful.

If they have their own funding, which they should strive for; they hire the support staff under their payroll. If they do not have funds, they seek the assistance of the government.

I just cannot understand the populist stance that Abu Samah wants to take. He is the head of the MNCF to make decisions and like in all democracies, there will be dissenting voices.

It is the duty of the leader to make the decision, no matter how tough it is, for the betterment of the sport. If he is not willing to do so, he should move out and let others to take charge.

Two Terms?

2008-07-29T08:26:00.000+08:00

South Asia has one of the biggest potential in sports, but sadly the policies in this region are just not conducive to proper development.

Countries like India and Pakistan have done well in specific sports but have the potential to do better in many others. While both countries have good sports policies, the implementation of the rules are almost non existent.

So it comes as a surprise that Pakistan has taken the first step to clean up its act. The Pakistan Senate, has given an August 20 deadline to senior officials of several national sports federations to quit office as they have already completed a maximum of two terms allowed under the National Sports Policy.

This is surprising for a nation where the sports officials are as powerful as the politicians. They wield a stranglehold on sports as they have strong political affiliation.

I personally know of at least two Paksitani sports officials, who have been holding on to their posts for more than two decades now. And neither sport has made any great headway in the international scene.

China, the most populous nation in the world, is expected to top the medal tally when they host the Olympics in Beijing next month. They finished second to the USA at the last Games.

But India, the second most populous country, will not even be among the top nations at the Games.

Indian sports is also headed by their own Napoleans. Some of these officials have been holding their positions for more than two decades.

Corruption in Indian sports is unbelievable. Athletes are forced to pay their way into the national teams. Various perks are offered to delegates so that officials can continue to stay in power.

At the end of the day, very few officials at the highest level really do care for their sports.
India, too has a sports policy requiring officials to quit after completing two terms, but no one follows it.

I think the two-term policy is something that Malaysian sports should also look into.

Do we have deadwoods in our sports federations? Of course, but they are not going to admit it.

For Sale?

2008-07-28T09:09:00.000+08:00

If you thought that the doping crisis at the Tour de France is giving the sport a bad name, think again.

I think it is great to see that the organisers are doing all they can to root out doping in cycling compared to some sports that prefer to hide their scandals.

A bigger scandal in cycling is brewing in cycling, if what the BBC alleges turns out to be true.

The BBC reports that the cycling discipline of keirin may have bought its way into the Olympics.

Read the report in detail here.

The BBC alleges that it has documents that suggest that organisers of the keirin event in Japan paid approximately USD 3 million to the UCI, the world cycling body.

Keirin originated from Japan and is said to command millions in gambling revenue.

Why, am I the least surprised that you can buy your way into the Olympics.

First, International Sports Federations have always shown their mean streak when it comes to money. Even rich organizations like FIFA is not exempted by the power and corruption that money brings.

Despite their lofty ideals, the Olympic movement has hardly been exemplary in the past.

Higher and higher

2008-07-27T10:31:00.000+08:00

The business of sports is getting more and more expensive that the chances of hosts making profits from them are getting less likely.

Much has been said about the huge sum that the Malaysian government had to fork out for events like the Monsoon Cup, Formula One and also the Champions Youth Cup.

But one thing that is for sure is that the cost of hosting big events is getting immoral.

A couple of weeks ago the Australia Rugby Union chief John O'Neill condemned the International Rugby Board (IRB) over the remuneration it is demanding from countries hosting the 2015 and 2019 World Cups.

The IRB revealed that the 2015 World Cup hosts would have to pay them 100 million pounds, while the 2019 hosts would be charged 120 million pounds.
Golfing sensation Tiger Woods is said to have commanded something in the region of US$2 million when he played at the World Cup of Golf in Malaysia.

Maria Sharapova, the darling of women’s tennis, commands almost US$500,000 in appearance fee. Roger Federer’s manager, it seems, has boasted that he would clinch a US$1 million appearance fee for his player this year. The highest ever paid for a tennis player.

It is also reported that CLM, the consultants given the task of keeping down the bill for the London Olympics, cost the taxpayers £87 million in the last financial year.

The cost of sanction and appearance alone now accounts for almost 70 percent of the total needed to stage an event.

While in some countries, sponsors are matured enough to use sports as an important marketing tool, most Malaysian sponsors have yet to have the same thinking.

Even so, the exorbitant cost of appearance fee and sanction is also a major turn-off.

Price of Gold

2008-07-25T09:54:00.000+08:00

Compared to China, Malaysia and many other countries spends pittance to ensure the success of their athletes at the Beijing Olympics.

The Epoch Times reports that the cost for each gold medal that China wins at the Olympics would be between USD 73 million to USD 87 million.

Although the General Administration of Sports of China never publicized all the numbers invested in preparation of Olympic Games, Bao Mingxiao, Head of Center for Sports and Social Science Research under the Administration estimated that the country invests approximately four to five million yuan ($590,000–$730,000) on one Olympic athlete. Assuming there are 400 athletes in China’s Olympic Delegation, the total cost is between 1.6 to 2.0 billion yuan ($234 million to $292 million). Convert the investment for each gold medal based on the 32 won in the last Olympics, and the cost for one gold medal is 500-600 million yuan ($73 million to $87 million).

Read more on the hidden cost of behind China’s Olympic Gold here.

Taufik stricken with Dengue

2008-07-24T23:00:00.000+08:00

Malaysia’s best bet for gold at the Beijing Olympics may just have one less opponent to think about,

I wan in Jakarta yesterday and heard that the defending Olympic champion Taufik Hidayat is down with dengue.

The Beijing Olympics is still a couple of weeks away and I sure hope Taufik will recover in time to mount his challenge.

I did it my way!

2008-07-24T22:48:00.000+08:00

The Badminton Players Federation (BPF) president Bobby Milroy wants Chinese coach Li Yongbo to be dismissed immediately. Failing which he wants the Chinese team to be kicked out of the Olympics.

Milroy’s call, in response to Yongbo’s admission to match fixing, is reported here.

Milroy does have a case but how strong is the BPF in the eyes of the Badminton World Federation (BWF).

I have had the pleasure of meeting Milroy in the past and found him vocal in wanting the players views to be heard.

But the BPF, at the moment, does not hold the clout. They desperately need the top players to get behind them. While the European and American players are strong supporters of the BPF, the top Asian players are not.

With the Asian badminton federations having an iron grip on the players, the BPF still has a long way to go before they would be considered seriously.

I would be surprised if any of the Chinese players even say a word against Yongbo if any investigations do take place.

And I would be even more surprised if the BWF do take any action against Yongbo. Yongbo still wields a strong influence in Chinese badminton. And the Chinese support and participation in the game is just too vital for the BWF.

A few weeks from now, China would probably dominate the Olympics badminton event, and Yongbo would be singing “I did it my way”.

Victims of Politics

2008-07-24T22:31:00.000+08:00

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed that Iraq would be banned from participating at the Beijing Olympics.

The move is in line with the IOC Charter that prohibits political interference. The Iraqi government had replaced the Iraqi Olympic Committee with its own appointees.

The committee’s chairman Ahmad al-Samarra'i, and several other members were abducted by gunmen while attending a meeting in central Baghdad in July 2006 and no news of their current whereabouts is available.

The IOC decision means that the Iraqi contingent, comprising of two rowers, two sprinters, one archer, one weightlifter and one judo competitor, are now deprived of their chance to participate at the prestigious meet.

While the IOC may be justified in wanting to adhere to their Charter, was this a fair decision?

Should the athletes be deprived of their chance of a lifetime to participate at the Olympics? Four years from now, they may not even qualify for the Olympics.

It is a grave injustice to the athletes, who are being victimised, for no fault of their own.

It is ironical, that at the end of the day, the decision to ban Iraq itself is based on a political reason. It has nothing to do with the athletes but with the notion of independence that the IOC wants to portray.

But is the IOC really an independent body that really abhors political intervention or corruption?

Charged!

2008-07-19T09:28:00.000+08:00

Transparency International rates Malaysia and Poland at number 43 and 61 respectively in their Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).

But for now it seems that at least Poland is taking a bigger step in curbing corruption in sports.
Poland’s former Sports Minister Tomasz Lipiec has been charged with overstepping his powers, corruption and fraud. He has pleaded not guilty.

Lipiec, was sport minister under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government, during the conflict between the government and the Polish Football Association after the then PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski suspended the executive committee, believing that they were doing too little to stamp out the spreading corruption among soccer coaches, players and officials.

Despite numerous reports of alleged corruption in Malaysia for many years, I can’t remember of any ocassion when someone has been actually charged for it.

Perhaps it is the Asian culture, when the perpetrator is given the benefit of resigning from his position. In return, the charges are dropped.

Political crackpot

2008-07-18T09:15:00.001+08:00

Should political affiliation be a criteria for anyone to be appointed to a key role in a sports association?

Over the last several months, we have been inundated with comments from so many international sports and political figures that politics and sports should not mix.

The uproar was caused by the Tibetan protest during the Beijing Olympics Torch Run.

While the Tibetan protest should be viewed differently, the current crisis in Sri Lankan cricket is a different matter.

Sri Lankan Sports Minister Gamini Lokuge is said to be stirring a hornets nest in wanting the country’s newly appointed manager Hashan Tilakaratne to quit his political affiliation if he wants to remain as the manager.

It seems that the both Lokuge and Tilakaratne come from the same area but are with rival political parties.

And the Minister now wants Tilakaratne to choose between politics and sports. And Lokuge can in fact kick the latter out as the rules say that the Minister must endorse the appointment for it to be permanent.

But has Tilakaratne’s political affiliation got anything to do with the sport. He was after all a great player who brought much success to the Sri Lankan cricket team. Tilakaratne played as a wicket keeper and than as a batsman for Sri Lanka in an illustrious career that lasted from 1989 to 2004.

And now, because he has a different political ideology, does that make him a lesser sports figure?

Is this mentality prevalent in other countries? Will it be any different in Malaysia?

Protection Act?

2008-07-18T08:43:00.000+08:00

The Berita Harian and the New Straits Times reports that the Ministry of Sports wants to amend the Sports Development Act to reduce the national sports associations control over their athletes.

It seems that the amendment could see the participation of athletes in international tournaments being made through the office of the Sports Commissioner or the National Sports Council (NSC).

I have to agree that too many times in the past, we have seen athletes being victimized because of intense politicking in associations.

During the Macau Asian Indoor Games, one national sports association chose to ignore the athletes from a particular state, which had won the national championships twice in succession, because of the problems with between the state and national management.

Datuk Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s suggestion has its merits. But it will also have its drawbacks.

International Federations (IF) would see it as a government interference into the affairs of the sport that they govern. Just as the Malaysian government does not relish the thought of foreign interference into their domestic affairs, IF’s would take a similar stance.

As far as the IF’s were concerned, the Sports Commissioner or the NSC are not their affiliates and have no locus standi in matters pertaining to the internal affairs of the sport.

But this is not always so. IF’s do work with governments in some instances. This will be a very tenuous relationship.

The Asian Hockey Federation, for instance, accepted the fact that the Indian Olympic Association and the Union Ministry of Sports, had dissolved the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF). They were even willing to work with the ad-hoc committee set up to oversee the game in India.

But, the AHF, which meets today in Hyderabad, will not stop two office bearer from the dissolved body to attend their meeting. The AHF has already confirmed that IHF president K.P.S. Gill and its former secretary K Jothikumaran would be still eligible to attend the meeting.

There is nothing that the Indian authorities can do to stop it, unless the IF decides otherwise and that too within the ambit of their constitution.

Datuk Ismail’s suggestion could also open a pandora’s box back at home.

First, it would once again blur the distinction on the role of the various sporting bodies in the country.

The Sports Commissioner’s Office and the NSC were set up for specific reasons and have their own roles to play in the development of Malaysian sport. But, the new suggestion, would seem to indicate that there was a move to usurp the powers of the national sports association.

The other pertinent question that needs to be answered -- what would constitute as the right time for the government to move in?

The amendment suggested by the Minister should not give either the Sports Commissioner or the NSC arbitrary powers in this issue.

The Sports Development Act already has provisions on how disputes within a sports association should be handled. The same Act also recognises national sports associations as the sole governing body of their respective sports.

Having recognised a national sports association as the sole governing body, can that role be usurped by another?

Instant Experts

2008-07-17T23:40:00.001+08:00

The Director General of the National Sports Council (NSC), Datuk Zolkeples Embong, wants elected officials to stop meddling in the duties entrusted to coaches.

He seems to think that the reason was because the officials don’t trust the coaches.

I don’t think that it the entire truth. One of the main reason that the officials meddle into the coaches duties is because it is an avenue for them to show their power.

Elected officials seem to have the notion that just because they are administrating the sport, they are also expert coaches.

In Malaysia, most of the key administrators of sports, have never played sports competitively at even state level. But somehow, the day after they are elected into office, they evolve into an entirely new creature.

The claim by national junior hockey coach V.Muraleedharan that he was not the decision-maker in preparing his charges for next year's Junior World Cup, is not an isolated case.

It is not the first and would not be the last. There have been many instances in other sports in the past when the team manager and the coach have been at loggerheads on the issue of selection.

Many sports associations have their own selection committee that decides on who is selected to represent the team. And many of these members, despite having never attended one training session, are entrusted with such an important duty.

This is a process that is can be abused.

Some of the selection criteria set to by some of these committees also leaves much to be desired.

One association recently had their selection trials to pick their national team. And the guideline set was a mockery to the sport.

The association insisted that only five players from each state will be considered for selection. How they came up with the idea that all the other players are of a much lower standard is baffling.

And to add to the matter, most affiliates did not even sent a single player for selection.

One coach wanted to call-up a few more players from one of the state that did send players for the trials, but the state secretary shot the proposal down because the players belonged to a particular club that was not in good standing with him.

This is how some of the elected officials operate and will continue to operate so long as they feel that they own the sport.

Sports=Money=Power

2008-07-16T07:39:00.000+08:00

The International Cycling Union (ICU) is the latest international sports federation to find out that may no longer be the sole custodians of their sport.

The business of sports around the world is becoming increasingly a trade of its own and athletes are beginning to put the dollar signs ahead of the so-called “Olympism” in sports.

Seventeen UCI ProTour cycling teams decided on Tuesday not to renew their ProTour licenses for the 2009 season.

The move is a direct blow to the authority of the UCI and may result in a rival body for the sports.

For starters, the breakaway group looks likely to create their own private league or in their own words -- "new system of organization for professional cycling."

Will the UCI have the guts to expel them? If they do, than, they are only going to hasten the formation of a rival group.

But the crux of the matter is that the whole issue is about finance and power.

Tennis, golf and basketball already have their own lucrative league. And the list is growing.

Motorsports may also see a rival circuit in near future. Volleyball now has two rival international bodies.

I expect more and more sports to break away, following the same trend.

Sports = money = power. Too much is at stake that many are now beginning to question the monopoly of the international sports federations.

Punch-ing out

2008-07-14T08:38:00.001+08:00

The just concluded Kuala Lumpur Badminton Association (KLBA) Annual General Meeting brought to an end the colourful badminton career of perhaps the most recognisable name in modern badminton -- Datuk Punch Gunalan.

Punch, despite his faults, was responsible for putting badminton on a global pedestal.

He was adored as much as he was loathed within the badminton fraternity. I had known him for almost twenty years and always found the man an intriguing character.

For me, he is a master politician. He understood human nature very well and used it to his fullest advantage. His supporters had unflinching respect and support for him while his detractors hated his mere presence.

He has had his fair share of controversies including the high profile spat with the Sidek brothers and Tan Sri Elyas Omar right at home.

His confrontation with the likes of China’s Lu Shenrong, the European Badminton Union as well as the recent head-on clash with Korea’s Dr Kang Young Joong has seen him battling all the way.

I have been on both sides of the fence on many of these controversies. I have confronted him on some of these issues and have supported him in others.

That was the effect that Punch had on everyone. Some of his worst detractors now were also his biggest supporters in the past.

It was his “friends” that finally got him out of the game. One senior member of the KLBA, who himself was unhappy with Punch, told me recently that he would support Punch if he wanted to retain the KLBA presidency.

“Many of us feel that the attempts to get him out of the KLBA were like further kicking a dead man,” said the official.

He told me that there are those who still fear of a comeback from Punch and attempts to get him out of the KLBA was to ensure that he had no footing in Malaysia to mount such a challenge.

I will leave it to the judgment of others on this matter.

However, I do believe that Punch has made another master stroke by handing over his KLBA presidency to Datuk Seri Andrew Kam.

If rumours were true, Andrew was the person that Punch was hoping to bring in to replace Dr Kang in the Badminton World Federation (BWF).
Being the new president of the KLBA, Andrew is now also the automatic vice president of the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM).

The legitimacy now gives Andrew a better route if he ever wanted to make his move up into the BWF. And Punch may still be the kingmaker, if he chooses to do it.

And with Dr Kang rumoured to be interested in being elected as a member of the International Olympic Council (IOC), the diversion could help.

How this whole affair plays out will be dependent on the perception of the Sports Commissioners Office on the legitimacy of the KLBA AGM.

Will the walkout of the approximately 10 affiliated members from the AGM, nullify the meeting and the elections?

Unless, these affiliates can prove that there was a breach of the constitution in the conduct of the meeting, they have no case to fight for.

Their walkout of the meeting would than be comparable to the resignation of Tun Dr Mahathir from Umno – all in a huff and in vain.

For now it looks like Punch has thrown a perfect uppercut on his rivals even as he leaves the ring.

Associations to ponder

2008-07-10T15:19:00.000+08:00

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word association as an organization of persons having a common interest.

Basically it means that if I do not have a common interest in the association, than I can go on and form my own association with like minded people.

It also means that I can go on and conduct activities for my own members without interference from other associations.

But will this be true in sports associations? Let’s take the recent crisis in the Malaysian Professional Golfers Association (MPGA) as an analogy.

The MPGA has now claimed that they have lost approximately RM 1.1 million in sanction fees, levies and entrance fees, because certain golfing events are being conducted without their approval.

If the MPGA, are the governing body for professional golf in the country, what are the recourses do they have against the rival parties?

From the best of my knowledge, they can suspend everyone linked, both the organisers and the participants, with the tournament from any of the MPGA sanctioned tournaments.

Hell, they can also say that they will no longer seek the same sponsors for future events.

But can the MPGA stop these individuals from playing golf in a tournament organised by a completely different group?

I understand that it could be different in amateur sport, but can you truly stop a professional event?

Isn’t it the right of the individual to ply his trade, in this case golf, in the manner he wants to.

In professional sports, nobody actually represents their country. They only represent their own interest.

As such is it prudent for the Sports Commissioners Office to bestow the MPGA the right as the sole governing body in the country? Is this not a monopoly on how the business of playing golf for living is being limited?

Let’s take the game of professional tennis for instance. The national Lawn Tennis Associations have no right to regulate where and when the professional players play.

They can’t even force the professional players to play in any of the other major competitions including the Olympics.

The regulations governing the professional players are the sole authority of the ATP or the WTA. But if there was a tournament conducted by a third party that does not clash with the associations calendar and the players commitment to the Tour, the players concerned are free to play anywhere in the world.

The ATP and WTA can sanction any tournament in any part of the world with no express sanction needed from any other body.

The difference between tennis and golf is that the formers membership is made up by individual members while golf does have regional members affiliated to the PGA as well as individual members.

The MPGA may feel that their powers, as well as financial standing, have been eroded by the current crisis.

They have every right to feel so as the Sports Commissioners Office has given them the right to call themselves as the sole governing body.

But the Sports Commissioners Office cannot give them the right as they are not the governing body for the sports at the international level. That power lies with the PGA or the APGA.

So MPGA’s problem now is that their line of authority looks pretty flimsy and, in my opinion, could be challenged in the court of law.

No Commercials

2008-07-10T08:25:00.000+08:00

Iranian head of the information office in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has just announced that sportsmen (and movie stars) would be banned from appearing in commercial advertisements.

The justification is that athletic role models should be promoting chivalry instead of consumerism.

Imagine Tiger Woods or Maria Sharapova and other top sports personalities being banned from appearing or endorsing commercial products.

The combined sponsorship and endorsement money they earn would probably be more than the GDP of many a number of third world countries.

Is this a right move? If Iran was a member of the EU, they would probably be sued for a myriad of trade and rights breach.

But this is Iran, and the athletes cannot claim any loss of income. Perhaps they will just have to settle to being used on commercials promoting good hygiene, courtesy campaign and other “chivalry” campaigns designed by the Iranian government.

Who's the Boss

2008-07-09T08:44:00.000+08:00

The Berita Harian reports here today that certain parties want the Kuala Lumpur Badminton Association (KLBA) Annual General Meeting to be conducted and supervised by the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM).

This is an interesting development that, in my opinion, should set the records straight on the powers of the national body over its affiliates and also the rights of the affiliates to conduct its own affairs. It should also set the records straight on the powers of the Sports Commissioner.

Does the BAM have the powers to conduct the AGM of an affiliated body? That can only be answered after we take a look at constitutions of both bodies. In normal circumstances, such clause does not exist.

I know of a number of youth organisations that require the attendance of a representative from the national body in a general meeting of any of their affiliates. The role of the representative was only to observe and prepare a report of what transpired to the national body.

This is spelt out in their terms and conditions to accept an affiliate member.

But was the right to conduct the AGM stated in the BAM constitution or was this a term when they accepted KLBA as their affiliate?

Asking the national body to interfere into the general meeting of its affiliate is akin to asking ASEAN to interfere into the Malaysian Parliament meeting.

Malaysia is a member of ASEAN, but that does not mean that ASEAN has sovereignty over the Malaysian parliament or their representative can become the Speaker.

In that same manner, the KLBA is a sovereign body by itself and their general body is their highest decision making body. Any decision made by the general body is binding, unless it was not made according to their own constitution. Or if there were prove that crime has been conducted.

One cannot pre-judge that the constitutional provisions were breached even before the meeting takes place. This is not the Minority Report, where criminals are apprehended because they would break the law in the future.

In my humble opinion, the only way the BAM can enforce their authority over KLBA in this issue will be dependent on whether the latter had breached BAM’s term and conditions of membership or if the Sports Commissioner revokes the registration of the KLBA.

If the AGM accepts that the problems relating to the financial statements will have to be resolved by the incoming office bearers, than by law it is a legal decision.

If anyone is not happy with this decision than they have to first lodge their objection to the relevant authorities. But any such objections must follow the set rules and regulations.

First they have to exhaust all the procedures available within the affiliated body. They can then, take it forward to the national body and if they are still unhappy they can bring it forward to the Olympic Council of Malaysia.

And if they are still unhappy they can go to the Sports Commissioner.

Almost all associations now have a provision that such matters cannot be brought to the courts and I am fairly certain that it is the same with the badminton fraternity.

So what will be the role of the Sports Commissioner?

My good friend Norbakti Alias, in his commentary in the Berita Harian, says that the Sports Commissioners office is toothless.

I may not agree entirely, as I am more of the opinion that the Sports Commissioners Office, by their selective action in the past, has lost much moral authority and is no longer seen as being fair.

The undisputable fact is that, the Sports Development Act does give the Minister the powers to make a final decision on any disputes within associations immaterial whether it was referred to the Minister or not.

But should the Minister use this power if no laws are broken or if the internal procedures prescribed by the sports association have been adhered to?

Just because the Minister has such sweeping powers, does that also means that the decision made by the Minister would be fair?

The right to play

2008-07-03T10:34:00.001+08:00

I read with great interest the news of the young Malaysian snooker international Moh Keen Ho contemplating to quit the national association.

Not because he may quit but more for the implications the decision brings forth, especially in the light of the suspension meted out on billiards player Patrick Ooi.

Is it wrong for a sportsman to decide to part ways with the national association and in wanting to pursue his sporting career elsewhere?

It seems to me that more and more of our national associations are now behaving like George Bush – you are with me or you are my enemy.

Sports federations do not have the right to stop sportsmen from earning living through the sport or to pursue their dreams of becoming the best in their field.

A majority of Malaysian sportsmen can no longer be classified as amateurs. Amateur sports require participants to participate without remuneration.

Amateurism in sports is a dying idea. Even the Olympics, with the exception of boxing, abandoned regulations on amateurism more than a decade ago.

No matter how we perceive the status of Malaysian sportsmen, they are now professionals. Full time athletes in Malaysia, earn monthly remuneration from the National Sports Council and they are in all context earning a living from sports.

The reward given by the Malaysian government, the latest a whopping RM 1 million for an Olympic gold, certainly cements the fact.

If the players are professional, than they have a right to ply their trade anywhere they deem is most beneficial to them.

It is scandalous for sports federations to think that they own the players absolutely. So long as the athlete has never abandoned the call to represent the nation, they have every right to train and chart their own careers.

And if they choose to do so under the auspices of the national sports federation, than they are bound by the contract they have with the federation. In the same context they should also have an exit clause if they chose to do so.

Obviously, the national sports federation has a right to impose penalties like transfer fee but they cannot arbitrarily decide to suspend or ban the athletes. The contract between players and sports federation should be classified in the same context of any other trade or business.

The issue of whether sport is a trade was addressed in the the British doping case of Gasser v. Stinson

This is what the Centre for Sport and Law says about the case:

.
In that case the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) argued that the athletes were "amateurs" and "did not and could not under IAAF rules, earn their daily bread as athletes". Further, the IAAF argued that while the activities of athletes enabled them to earn potentially large sums of money, most of it came from contracts between the national federations and a sponsor to which the athletes themselves were not parties. This money, it said, was not available for the athletes' immediate enjoyment (except for expenses) and their entitlement to it lay in the future. The Judge rejected this position stating:

I am unable to accept that these circumstances take the case out of reach of restraint of trade law. The policy underlying restraint of trade law is that people should be free to exploit for their financial gain the talents and abilities that they may have. I would accept that restraint of trade law would not be applicable to activities that were undertaken for no financial reward at all (for example, school sport). . But, in a sport which allows competitors to exploit their ability in the sport for financial gain and which allows that gain to be a direct consequence of participation in competition, a ban on competition is, in my judgment, a restraint of trade.

How many of our Malaysian sportsmen are aware of this?

Rumours are that several national badminton players may opt to quit the national body after the Beijing Olympics. This is not new to Malaysian badminton since it has happened before with players opting to join professional outfits like Nusa Mahsuri and Wira Tangkis and more recently the Kuala Lumpur Racquet Club.

It remains to be seen how the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) will handle this issue if the rumours of players moving out turns out to be true.

And it also remains to be seen how the Keen Ho issue turns out.

Can of Worms

2008-07-03T09:15:00.002+08:00

The BBC has reported that the result of the controversial 2006 Oval Test between England and Pakistan is to be changed to a draw.

England were initially awarded the match after Pakistan, accused of ball tampering, allegedly refused to come out of the dressing room to continue the match.

The BBC rightfully claims that the impending decision by the International Cricket Council (ICC) would open up "an absolutely enormous can of worms”.

Pakistani captain Inzaman Ul Haq was cleared of ball tampering but was given a short suspension for bringing the game into disrepute.

Australian Darrell Hair, who was one of the umpires of the match back in 2006, was dropped by the ICC from their elite umpiring panel. He took the ICC to the industrial tribunal but later withdrew the allegations. Hair recently returned to Test cricket.

Is it right for the ICC to change the results of the game, one that has been decided according to the books?

I always believe that the umpires (or referees) decision should always be final. By overruling the of the umpire after a decision is made, in this case after almost two years, will only see more litigation in future matches.

Having been involved, and still involved in sports as an administrator, I am amazed by how the ICC is handling this matter.

Whatever happened to match commissioners or jury of appeal that are appointed to handle exactly such matters immediately during the tournament?

Or maybe the ICC does not have such measures in their sport.

In this case Pakistan could have continued playing the match under protest. They were wrong in failing to stick to this basic notion of sportsmanship.

And the ICC is now rewarding them for bringing the game into disrepute by giving them a draw when they deserved none.

Grunt Queen

2008-06-28T17:11:00.000+08:00

Maria Sharapova's grunts topped out at 103.2 decibels during her loss at Wimbledon on Thursday, The Daily Telegraph recorded and reported.

That is supposed to be louder than a motorcycle or a lawnmower.

She has apparently gone louder than that last year, topping 103.7 decibels.

Normal conversation is registered at between 60 and 70 decibels and research has shown 115 decibels exceeds the human pain threshold.

Sustained exposure at 90-95 decibels can lead to hearing loss. For you guys out there, who fantasize about Maria, I have one advise -- bring your earplugs along.

To die for

2008-06-28T16:47:00.004+08:00

So you think you are a true die-hard sports fan? Now you have a chance to prove it.

Eternal Image, an American company started producing licensed-image caskets and urn for you sports fans out there.

The company sells several urns and caskets that feature licensed art or logos, among other from Major League Baseball.

They should look into coming out with products featuring the EPL teams. There are thousands of Malaysians out there, who claim they are die-hard fans and this will be a lifetime (or afterlife) opportunity to prove their allegiance.

Powers to sanction

2008-06-28T16:21:00.001+08:00

The issue of sanctioning of international tournaments is becoming a bone of contention in more and more sports.

In Malaysia, the license given out by the Sports Commissioner to organisers of sports events, cannot be considered as sanction.

Sanction can only be granted by the governing sports body. So in the context of the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) and the Champions Youth Cup (CYC) the established rule prevails.

FAM has the right to sanction the tournament based on the powers delegated to it by FIFA.

It is the International Federations (IF’s) that hold the ultimate powers of governing their respective sport. The Malaysian Sports Ministry, by virtue of the powers given to it by the Sports Development Act, has the powers to register a sports body in Malaysia but does not have the legal right to endow the body with governing rights or undertake the same powers.

This is why the Sports Commissioners office has not been able to resolve the controversy surrounding the sport of taekwondo in Malaysia.

Why am I giving this lesson on governing authority? Well, it is because of the latest spat between the organisers of the Selangor Masters and the Mercedes Asian Tour with the Malaysian Professional Golfer’s Association (MPGA).

The organisers claim that they already have the sanction of the Sports Commissioner. As far as I am concerned this is hogwash. The Sports Commisioner has no powers to sanction any sporting event.

MPGA, on its part, claims that they are the governing body for the professional sport in Malaysia and they have been recognized as so by the Sports Commissioner. But this is also an entirely debatable issue.

As I said earlier, the Sports Commissioner cannot give powers that they do not own. That power has to come from an international body governing the sport.
Has the MPGA been empowered by the international body?

This for me, seems almost similar to the situation faced by professional tennis in Malaysia.

The governing body for professional men’s tennis is the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) governs the women’s professional game.

The rules of both bodies clearly states that there is no need for sanction of any professional events in Malaysia. That is why the Lawn Tennis Association of Malaysia, who are the affiliated to the International Tennis Federation (ITF) has no right to stop such events in Malaysia.

The LTAM only governs amateur tennis and had joint jurisdiction with the four Grand Slams.

When the LTAM demanded for sanction fee the last time Malaysia hosted the ATP more than ten years ago, they found the bitter truth in the matter.

In the latest problem relating to the MPGA, we may have to look into whether the MPGA is in fact the “true” governing body.

One cannot lay claim to powers of a governing body just because the Malaysian government says so.

I am also surprised with the comments made by the MPGA secretary that state governments should not spend taxpayers money to promote foreign golf professionals.

This is a sweeping statement that does no take into consideration that Malaysian professional golfers also participate in tournaments overseas. What if the same argument is used to stop Malaysian golfers in playing in those tournaments?

Height of Hypocrisy

2008-06-25T08:36:00.000+08:00

The United Kingdom government is seeking to ensure Zimbabwe will not be allowed to play in next summer's one-day internationals or the Twenty20 World Cup in the country.

It is in response to the withdrawal of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai from the second round of Zimbabwe's general election and reports of social unrest under Robert Mugabe's regime.

I think it is the morally right move for UK to take, especially in light of the way Mugabe is trying to hold on to power.

But, this, for me., is also the height of hypocrisy we have in modern sporting world.

By taking the moral high ground in the issue of Zimbabwe, they have totally forgotten how they have closed both eyes to the issue of China and Tibet.

How different is the situation in Tibet as compared to Zimbabwe?

Is it because China is now a dragon in world economy and Zimbabwe a mere speck in the world map?

If the UK government wants to impose moral judgment on one country, should they not also apply the same rule with others?

I certainly hope that Prime Minister Gordon Brown show the same guts by withdrawing the UK team from the Beijing Olympics in support of the Tibetans.

My way or the Highway!

2008-06-24T08:33:00.001+08:00

Last week, the Pakistan government took the drastic step to sack the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) secretary Khalid Mahmood and replace him with their own nominee Asif Bajwa.

So far, the PHF has refused to accept the decision.

The sports Minister Najmuddin Khan has even threatened to resign if the government nominee was not accepted.

Why is he so confident that he would get his way? The answer lies in the Pakistan Sports Development Ordinance of 1962.

Like the Malaysian Sports Development Act, the Pakistani act gives virtually unlimited powers to the Sports Minister.

In the context of the law, the position of the sports minister as the supremo of sports in the country has the powers to be the judge, jury and the executioner.

It remains to be seen whether Najmuddin’s stance will go well with the International Hockey Federation (FIH). No mater how noble the decision may be, it can still be construed as interference into the governance of the sports.

What also caught my attention in this saga was the fact that the Pakistani Sports Ministry has also issued notices asking officials of federations working for more than two terms to quit their posts.

Similarly, in India, the Sports Union Ministry is also mulling the same action. The law in India also states that key office bearers in sports associations cannot hold the post for more than two terms.

But, in both countries the provision were never implemented or enforced for decades.

It is also ironical, that that in the case of the PHF, the secretary was dismissed because of the sad state of Pakistani hockey. But the action was not taken against the entire PHF board.

Selective prosecution, even in Malaysia, is the reason why many of us do not trust the politicians.

Beach Party?

2008-06-24T08:14:00.000+08:00

The national news agency Bernama, reported that the sports associations wanting to participate at the Asian Beach Games will have to bear the cost themselves.

The agency went on to quote Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) secretary Datuk Sieh Kok Chi saying that the status of the Games was not the same as the SEA Games, Asian Games or the Olympics.

I find both statements intriguing and needs more scrutiny.

I have no qualms that sports associations wanting to participate at the Games will have to bear the cost. But is that all the criteria and standards that the OCM have set.

These athletes are still representing the country and there must be a certain level of standards that must be imposed. At the last Asian Indoor Games in Macau, at least one sports association picked a sub-standard team and the team was humiliated in their matches.

Should the OCM again encourage the same to happen at the Asian Beach Games? Is national pride not at stake?

Will the OCM agree is sports associations agree to bear the entire cost to participate at the SEA Games or the Asian Games without any other pre-conditions?

The statement that the Asian Beach Games was not of the same status as the other multi-sports events was more disturbing.

What was the reason behind the creation of the Games, if the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) and its affiliates (OCM) included had no intention of being serious with the Games?

If the OCA had no intention of ensuring that the Asian Beach Games was a serious venture, they had no business in creating it.

If it was just a measure to appease the sports, that did not get a spot at the other multi-sports events, the OCA has got its priorities wrong.

Fixing the Game

2008-06-23T08:29:00.002+08:00

The Sunday Times, London reported that at least four matches from last year’s Wimbledon could have been fixed by professional gambling syndicates.

This is not the first time that match fixing has been linked to tennis. Last year it was alleged that the match between Russian Nikolay Davydenko, ranked No 4 in the world, and Martin Vassllo Arguello of Argentina was fixed. Investigation on the two players is still going on.

How rampant is match fixing in modern sports? I think it is bigger than many come to belief.

So much so that that the International Olympic Council (IOC) in a bid to prevent illegal gambling and match-fixing have created a special unit to watch for suspicious betting patterns during the Beijing Games.

Match fixing should not be confined to just those that involve monetary gains but also done in an effort to give unfair advantage to a player or team.

Take for instance the revelation by Chinese badminton head coach Li Yongbo that he had asked his own player Zhou Mi to throw her semi-final tie against teammate Zhang Ning at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Or the allegations of fixing made at the Asian Zone Olympic qualifiers for the handball competition.

Football, especially, has been rocked by various claims of match fixing and the same has happened to Malaysia before and has been raised again this year.

There have been allegations of match fixing in Malaysia in many other sports, that have gone unreported.

During the last World Badminton Championships, there was a rumour going around that a top player was presented with a BMW for losing a match. This was never really investigated but it was common knowledge within the fraternity that some form of organised betting was taking place.

It is also common knowledge that huge amounts of money exchange hands during football matches here in Malaysia. And this is not confined to Premier League but at state level competitions. However, whether these betting syndicates are able to influence the outcome of the matches need to be investigated.

There were also allegations during the 1998 Commonwealth Games that boxing and even gymnastics results were fixed. This was never investigated or proven.

Talk to some of the top martial arts exponents in the region and they will tell you how rampant fixing of matches is done in the boardroom of major internationals including the SEA Games and the Asian Games.

While they may not say it on record, there is certainly plenty of suspicion that something amiss in some of the results.

Match fixing is gaining more notoriety in recent times on two fronts – gambling syndicates and the chase for gold.

While gambling syndicates are something that most of us know about, it is the chase for gold at any cost which is the bigger threat to organised sports.

This is because the corruption starts within the administration that has been assigned to upkeep the integrity of the sports.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

2008-06-19T08:56:00.001+08:00

Remember the days when we used to play Rock, Paper, Scissors. Well it seems that it is no longer a kiddy game.

Well get ready for the inaugural International Rock Paper Scissors Federation Championship (IRPSF) in Beijing. The championships scheduled to be held during the Beijing Olympics is expected to see champions from the USA, Canada, Guam, Hong Kong, Ireland and Malaysia (Yes! Malaysia).

The five countries joining the U.S. for the international competition in Beijing will conduct their tournaments concurrently.

This is according to the USA Rock, Paper Scissors League (USARPS) , the governing body for the sport in America.

The American champion will receive USD50,000 prize money. Just wondering what will be the prize money for the Malaysian champion. If they offer USD50,000 as well, I am putting my name in to play.

It seems that last years US championships was aired on ESPN and this year they have made a deal with Fox TV.

Sure hope RTM or TV3 will pick up the Malaysian finals.

Raging Bull Tops

2008-06-18T22:17:00.003+08:00

The American Film Institute released their pick of the top ten sports movies. The one movie from that list I have never seen before was The Pride of Yankees. The surprise inclusion, from my viewpoint, is the comedy Caddyshack.

The top ten are:

1. Raging Bull
2. Rocky
3. The Pride of the Yankees
4. Hoosiers
5. Bull Durham
6. The Hustler
7. Caddyshack
8. Breaking Away
9. National Velvet
10. Jerry Maguire

The movies that did not make the top ten but were nominated were

Ali, Angels in the Outfield, Any Given Sunday, Bad News Bears, Bang the Drum Slowly, The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars & Motor Kings, Body and Soul, Breaking Away, Champion, Chariots of Fire, The Color of Money, Cool Runnings, Damn Yankees, Downhill Racer, Eight Men Out, Fear Strikes Out, Field of Dreams, The Freshman, Friday Night Lights, The Great White Hope, Heart Like a Wheel, Horse Feathers, The Hurricane, The Karate Kid, Knute Rockne – All American, A League of their Own, The Longest Yard, Major League, The Mighty Ducks, Million Dollar Baby, Miracle, Mystery Alaska, National Velvet, The Natural, North Dallas Forty, Pat and Mike, Personal Best, Rudy, Seabiscuit, Slap Shot, Somebody up There Likes Me, White Men Can’t Jump.

My favourite among the movies that did not make the top ten is Seabiscuit and Cool Runnings.

This is sick!

2008-06-17T08:56:00.002+08:00

While ASEAN continues to hide behind the so called "solidarity" bullshit, the Myanmar regime continues with its atrocity against its own people.

This time the victim is a sportswriter who was helped to deliver aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis.

AFP has a report on it here.

A popular sports writer who helped deliver aid to victims of the cyclone in Myanmar has been arrested, the second aid volunteer detained in two weeks, his wife told AFP on Monday.

Zaw Thet Htwe, 42, was arrested Friday by special branch police in the central town of Minbu, where he was visiting his ailing mother, his wife said.

He had organised five trips to deliver aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis in the devastated Irrawaddy Delta, but police said that was not the reason for his arrest, his wife Khaing Cho said.

No reason was given for his detention, she said, adding that police had searched their home in Yangon and seized his computer and cell phone

Player Power

2008-06-16T10:33:00.001+08:00

The top three world ranked tennis players -- Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic -- are running unopposed to be voted on the Player Council of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) next Saturday.

This is probably the first time that three of the top athletes in any sport have taken the bold step to be part of the decision making process.

While the ATP, being a professional body, encourages their players to have a say in the direction the sport takes, this is a taboo in every other amateur sport.

Not long ago when I was the honorary secretary of a national sports association, I had proposed that the constitution of the association be amended to include the representation of two players’ representative in the council.

That suggestion saw an instant death as none of the other office bearers saw it befitting for a player to sit in the council.

One official told me that the athletes have no business in how the association is run and they should not be privy to matters discussed at the council.

American player James Blake, who is an outgoing council member of the ATP had this to say

"It's a great thing that the top three are involved and a great thing that they are concerned and want to help the sport. Probably all we should ask of them is to go out and play the game, because they are the best advertisement for our sport right now. But they are doing more. It's like getting an A+ on a test and still going for extra credit."

I find it amusing that sports officials have this unwritten rule in their bible that only they should decide how the association is run and that athletes are persona non grata in decision making.

In Asia, Malaysia included, players are nurtured to be subservient to the office bearers.

Let me pick another quote from James Blake:

"We don't need to be treated like little children. We are athletes, but we can make decisions, and we need to be consulted."

One Malaysian senior sports official was unhappy that the Malaysian team athletes were putting up in the official hotel together with the foreign participants during an international meet.

He was of the opinion that the Malaysian athletes should stay at their own homes. “Why do we need to treat them like they are some big stars,” he told me.

I told him that the only reason that he was an official of a sports association, was because there were athletes playing the sport and that he had to respect the players if he wanted them to respect him.

In Malaysia, I wonder whether the athletes respect the officials or fear them.

After all, the officials wield so much power that they could make or break the careers of budding athletes.

I personally know of at least one athlete, who was booted out of the team to make way for another for political reasons. This was just days after being selected and the father throwing a big party to celebrate his child’s selection.

I know of officials, who after five years of failed attempt, were still vindictive of some sportsmen turning out for a state team.

I know more than a dozen of sports officials, who are unable to accept dissenting views from the athletes.

I certainly feel that the voice of the athlete must be heard in a proper forum within the association’s set-up. And this is not through seminars or other non-binding meetings. Their voice should be heard in the decision making bodies, like the council.

Happy Fathers Day

2008-06-13T14:52:00.002+08:00

Happy Fathers Day to all you dads out there.

It has been 25 years since my dad took the journey to GOD's abode. We remembered him with a special prayers at home and lunch with some delightful children from a nearby orphanage on Thursday.

Real Origins?

2008-06-13T10:49:00.003+08:00

Not too long ago, there were some stories posted on the web that questioned the true identity of Hang Tuah and his compatriots.

The stories claimed that Hang Tuah was in fact a Chinese warrior. Truth of fiction?

And today I was trying to get some background on the sport of sepaktakraw and found this interesting bit in wikipedia.

Sepak takraw was almost definitely based on the Chinese game of cuju (a name which also means "kick ball"). The sport would have been brought in through early trade and had already become popular in Malaysia and Thailand by the early 1400s. Back then it was called takraw in Thai or sepak raga (literally "kick rattan ball", because the ball is made of rattan) in Malay and played mainly by men and boys standing in a circle, kicking the ball back and forth between them.

In Bangkok, murals at Wat Phra Keow depict the Hindu god Hanuman playing takraw in a ring with a troop of monkeys. Other historical accounts mention the game earlier during the reign of King Nareusan of Ayutthaya. The game remained in its circle form for hundreds of years, and the modern version of sepak takraw began taking shape in Thailand sometime during early 1740s.

In 1866, the Siam Sports Association drafted the first rules for takraw competition. Four years later, the association introduced the volleyball-style net and held the first public contest. Within just a few years, takraw was introduced to the curriculum in Siamese schools. The game became such a cherished local custom that another exhibition of volleyball-style takraw was staged to celebrate the kingdom’s first constitution in 1933, the year after Thailand abolished absolute monarchy.

Later in 1935, the game was first played differently in the state of Negri Sembilan, Malaysia during the Silver Jubilee celebration of SMK King George V. By the 1940s, the net version of the game had spread throughout Southeast Asia, and formal rules were introduced. In the Philippines the sport was called “Sipa”, in Myanmar, or Burma, it was dubbed “Chinlow”, in Laos "Kator", "cầu mây" in Vietnam and in Indonesia "Raga."

International play is now governed by ISTAF, the International Sepak Takraw Federation. The King’s Cup World Championships are held every year in Thailand.

So is sepaktakraw also of Chinese origin?

Oh! Oh!

2008-06-09T18:12:00.003+08:00

Rumours are that a high ranking staff (not elected official) in a national sports federation is under investigation for sexual harassment and has been forced to resign from his post.

I am not telling who is it. Find out for yourself.

Do we pay more?

2008-06-08T08:59:00.003+08:00

Another Malaysian sport seems to be making some international headline. This time it is motorsports or more specifically the Malaysia F1.

Motor Trend in their article on the F1 Supremo Bernie Ecclestone has this to say:

Questions are also being asked about the direction the sport is taking. Some of the classic events in Europe have fallen by the wayside, in favor of races in countries that have no motorsporting tradition. In the last 10 years or so, countries like Portugal and Austria have lost their races, while Germany and Italy -- both of which used to have two GPs -- are down to one each. Two of the countries that have staged championship races since the FIA set up its world series in 1950, France and Great Britain, are in the last two years of their contracts, with not a sign of sympathy from Ecclestone.

In their place have come new venues: Malaysia, Bahrain, Turkey, China, and (this year) Singapore. These places all have two things in common: an unfamiliarity with the traditions of motorsport and autocratic governments, which are more than willing to use motorsport as balm to soothe not only their own populations but also to put a friendly face on their own administrations. It should perhaps have been no surprise in 2006 when Turkish government officials hijacked the podium ceremony in Istanbul by suddenly nominating a political accomplice, the president of the rogue northern (Turkish) "republic" of Cyprus, to present the trophies. Such is the penalty for mixing sport with politics.

Even at $50 million a pop, the cost of staging a Grand Prix is no deterrent to a regime that is prepared to use a podium ceremony for its own grubby unsporting ends. Indeed, the venues listed in the previous paragraph not only pay considerably more than established circuits for their race, but they were all encouraged to build fancy new circuits.

The last paragraph, especially raises some questions.

Threats and intimidation... welcome to the world of badminton

2008-06-07T12:45:00.004+08:00

Many of my friends have asked me why I have not written a single piece in my blog on the current crisis in the badminton world.

Well, that is a personal choice. But reading this article in The Herald today has forced me to post at least the story.

It is too interesting story not to post it on the blog. But, I am sticking by my personal choice not to make any comments on it as many of the officials from both side of the issue are my personal friends.

This is what the Herald reports:

Death threats, people fleeing the country, computer hacking, police swoops, allegations of sabotage and terrorism. No, it's not another sleazy saga from F1, nor even a script for the latest episode of Spooks - it's much too far-fetched for that. No, it's just another badminton meeting.

Details are emerging from last month's annual meeting of the Badminton World Federation in Jakarta, where government interference raises serious issues over governance of the sport. These could lead to legal action on several fronts.

The BWF deputy president, Punch Gunalan, who survived a coup in Glasgow during last year's Sudirman Cup, has been ousted. Common-wealth singles gold medallist in Christchurch in 1974, he was victim of a vote of no-confidence in his absence in Jakarta. The Malaysian fled the country fearing for his safety.

The no-confidence vote, brought by Mongolia, was allegedly incompetent as their dues remained unpaid. The Court of Arbitration for Sport has yet to rule on its validity, but Gunalan realises that whatever their opinion, he would again be voted out. So he resigned last week.

Karen Koh, chief executive of Badminton Asia, was confronted with copies of personal correspondence between herself and Gunalan. These intercepted private emails had been turned over to security police. Taken into a room with five men, it was demanded that Koh sign a pre-prepared letter of resignation and leave the country. She was given no opportunity to contact her embassy or seek legal advice.

Several BWF council members left early, feeling threatened. Mike Sertin, president of Badminton England, confirmed last night that he had sent their delegates, Nora Perry and Ciri Ciniglio, to the airport. Perry, the former England international, had felt "very uncomfortable," said Sertin.

Robin Bryant, the BWF vice president from Australia, was escorted from the meeting by a group of police and questioned. He also left the country.

Sri Lankan chair of administration Eraj Wijesinghe was told at 8.30 on the morning of the agm that police wanted to question him immediately. The Koh-Gunalan emails referred to him and Bryant having "sabotaged" the annual meeting - a reference to adminstrative constitutional rulings on proposals at the meeting. Clearly out of context, it was suggested that "sabotage" was linked to "terrorism". Security officers were very sensitive.

Though given no chance to consult his embassy, Wijesinghe was aware anyone questioned on terrorist activities could be held incommunicado indefinitely. He also quit the country immediately.

Badmintonscotland's feisty chief executive, Anne Smillie, refused to join the exodus. "If I'd been carried out, I'd have gone kicking and screaming - making sure there was a photographer there," she said. "If I was going to be criticised at the meet-ing, I wanted to face my accusers."
In the event there were none, which augurs well for Ms Smillie in next year's BWF elections.

Behind all this is Oriental passion for the sport and a power struggle between Gunalan and the BWF president, Dr Kang Young Joong. The Korean launched the Badminton World Foundation, whom even the non-university educated will realise has the same initials as the federation.

Opponents say these intials are inapproprite, and believe Kang's foundation contravenes both the federation constitution and Olympic charter. For this reason Kang has twice been suspended as chair of the BWF council.

Leon Douglas, president of BadmintonScotland, who was in Jakarta, said he was "horrified". Sertin agrees and they're discussing how to proceed. "In European or Western cultures that behaviour would not have been tolerated," said Sertin while Douglas added that the meeting should have been cancelled. "It seemed a foreign government had intervened, contrary to BWF and Olympic rules," Douglas said.

A Thai on the board of Kang's foundation launched a vicious attack on the absent Wijesinghe. His diatribe included religious hyperbole to the effect that while the speaker would go to heaven, the council member would not. President Kang thanked the speaker "for his wise counsel, which will be acted on so that our beautiful sport can grow wings and fly ever upwards for the sake of our adored children."