AS a former national athlete, I, like many others, was happy to learn of Malaysia’s new speed demon, 18-year-old Badrul Hisyam Abdul Manap. He won the 100m in a record time (10.29 seconds) as well as the 200m (21.39 seconds) at the Asean School Games (ASG) in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.
He was also in the 4x100m quartet who set a record time of 39.86, erasing Thailand’s previous time of 40.55.
The performance of our junior track and field athlete augurs well for Malaysia in the coming 2017 SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur, provided some long-standing issues that have been plaguing us are resolved in a concrete manner.
The ASG indicates that we have a wealth of hidden talents but the guardians of Malaysian athletics for development and competition have failed in their responsibility of identifying, nurturing and developing them.
My personal analysis and plausible reasons for this are: Weak, power-crazy, egoistic leadership that is lacking in talent-development knowledge and selection of the right quality coaches at the grassroots level, and the failure in producing talents for the future not only in athletics but also in other sports.
Real sports leaders refuse to take credit for success, such as former Malaysian Athletics Federation (MAF) president in the late 1960s and 1970s, the late Tun Ghazali Shafie. He helped athletes, gave pep talks and refused to take the credit for success.
However, there are only a handful of high-ranking officials who will always accept responsibility for their failures and step down. You can count with your fingers how many have overstayed in spite of the criticism hurled at them for reasons as listed below:
LACK of character: It doesn’t matter what your title is. If you fail to deliver or demonstrate a constancy in character as a sports leader, you won’t elicit trust, engender confidence and create loyalty.
LACK of vision: It is the role of the presidents of 57 National Sports Associations (NSAs) to clearly define and communicate the associations’ vision with actionable training and developmental and competition initiatives. Without vision and effective planning, the responsibility falls squarely on the executive committee. If these people are “yes-men”, the association will be in troubled waters, as what we are seeing in many of our sports associations today.
LACK of execution: Everything boils down to execution. Ensuring a certainty of execution must be the priority of the various committees. The NSA leadership team that doesn’t focus on deploying the necessary talent and resources to ensure that the largest risks are adequately managed or that the biggest opportunities are exploited is a leadership team destined for failure.
FLAWED strategy and poor fund management: A flawed strategy reveals weak leadership. While there are exceptions to every rule, sports associations tend to succeed by design and fail by default. Sports leaders must deploy, manage funds with responsibility and not squander them, as we have seen in some of our NSAs, where there are no proper check and balance by the Sports Commissioner’s Office.
It is time that some sports bodies get a revamp, especially under-performing ones. This can be done by employing some of the best coaches or technical directors to raise our standards and redeem our lost glory, like MAF, which now has raw diamonds that can be polished to bring them to an Asian first-class level.
n C. SATHASIVAM SITHERAVELLU, Seremban, Negri Sembilan