KUALA LUMPUR: Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) president Tan Sri Norza Zakaria stressed that Malaysia is "lucky" to have failed miserably at the Phnom Penh Sea Games.
Norza said the national contingent's seventh place finish in Cambodia — the lowest the nation has ranked in the history of the biennial competition — has provided Malaysian sports with a much-needed wake-up call.
"I think we are lucky that we did not achieve our 40 gold target. If we did, everyone would be happy (and not take action)," said Norza at a press conference in Bukit Jalil today.
"I have been involved in the Sea Games since 2015, and I knew this (poor result) was coming.
"We said we would conduct postmortems (after previous games), but we did not and kept changing governments. Sports has been treated like a stepchild.
"I feel bad for the sports minister (Hannah Yeoh) and her deputy (Adam Adli Abdul Halim) because they arrived at a time when we are at our lowest.
"On behalf of OCM, I want to make it clear that this (failure) is not their (minister's or deputy minister's) fault.
"I think this is a blessing in disguise, we need to take stock, bite the bullet, call a spade a spade, and move on.
"The model we have in place for sports is outdated, we have to change. We need to reset Malaysian sports and must focus on both sides — government operators and the private sector.
"All parties must work together to revive Malaysian sports. We shouldn't be pointing fingers, this is a shared responsibility."
National athletes won 34 gold, 45 silver and 96 bronze medals at the Sea Games, falling short of the 40 gold target.
Neighbouring Singapore once again finished ahead of Malaysia, placing sixth on 51-43-64.
Vietnam (136-105-118), Thailand (108-96-108) and Indonesia (87-80-109) claimed the top-three spots.
Norza said Malaysia should stop comparing itself with Singapore and instead aim for the top three spots.
"Even if we did achieve our 40 gold target, we would still be (in) seventh (spot) overall. Should we be happy with that?
"Singapore beat us by 17 gold medals, but Vietnam won 102 gold medals more than we did. So where are we as far as benchmarking is concerned?
"We should be comparing ourselves with the top three and striving for the top spots."
The last time Malaysia placed within the top three at the games (other than those hosted in Malaysia) was during the Nakhon Ratchasima edition in 2007.
National athletes won 68-52-96 to place second overall at the time.
Norza stressed that Malaysia's weak performances in athletics and swimming continued to weigh down the nation's overall position in the competition.
"I have been saying this since the Manila Games (2019), if these two sports do not perform well, we can never bring ourselves up (the medal table), but nothing has changed.
"In Phnom Penh, we won one gold out of 39 on offer in swimming, and we only won five golds out of 48 in athletics. Combined, these two offered 87 golds, and they are both Olympic sports."