After much effort in getting the Malaysia International Online Diving competition underway today, Malaysia Swimming (MS) are keeping their fingers crossed that the two-day event will proceed without any hiccups.
There is certainly much at stake with a lot of expectations on this first-of-its-kind event.
And MS have spent RM24,000 just to upgrade their internet connectivity at the National Aquatic Centre in Bukit Jalil in order to provide quality live streaming for the competition.
For national diving coach Christian Brooker, getting good internet connection was the first step in overcoming the hurdles for this challenge.
"The main challenge is without doubt the internet and it was not as good as what we thought it was," he said.
"And to run the competition and streaming smoothly, we need to have high definition videos with dedicated servers and it was really hard with the current network.
"We are also getting this competition done with a budget at the same time and it has been tough to get things to work.
"In fact, I feel like I gained a degree in video production throughout this process," the Australian quipped,
Brooker, who was also the one behind the idea of launching an online dive meet, however added that it was imperative for the event to run smoothly in order to get the divers back to competitive levels and to aid in their Tokyo Olympics preparation.
"With the Tokyo Olympics coming up, we need the divers to be able to prepare and to have a competition is the best way to fire them up."
"Unfortunately with the Covid-19 situation, the whole world is affected and sports are not spared either with a lot of events held back.
"We can only do so much to minimise the process losses and the only way was to compete online to ensure our standards are still high.
"It is also amazing that no one came up with an idea for online diving and I did a lot of research to get the groundwork done.
"It's definitely going to be a challenge running at the same time with other countries being in other time zones but its amazing what technology can do and I'm proud that we are the first to get this going," added Brooker.
The competition will involve divers from Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Japan with the judges watching and judging through computers.
MS secretary Mae Chen said that no entry fees were charged to participating countries and the only requirement was their internet connection and cameras.
"On our side, we needed to spend about RM24,000 to upgrade the internet system to 300mbps," she said.
"We are negotiating with Perbadanan Stadium Malaysia and hopefully the Sports Minister can also help us out a little as this is really for the glory of the country and for the sake of the divers."