After 12 days of debacle, finally the curtain was closed yesterday at Stadium Jakabaring, Palembang. Next host will be Naypyidaw, Myanmar on 2013.
It was a mixture of feeling for Malaysians on the performance of the team and also as host. Let's focus on the host:
1. Opening ceremony was different by honoring their sports legends to light up the torch.
2. Traditional and modern performance by the dancers and artist for both closing and opening ceremony. I felt it was like a live concert. Furthemore, we had our own Jacqueline Victor performing on stage.
3.All the teams has won gold medal except for Brunei
4.There were 6 games introduced for this games i.e vorinam, paragliding, roller skating, kempo etc which had 79 medals and the host grabbed 49 of it.
5.As usual subjective games became their advantage to grab medals and their medal tally went up to 182 gold medals which is no match to the other countries.
6.The football match was a nightmare especially when it involves Malaysian team. The Malaysian players’ bus was stuck outside stadium for 45minutes where the fans shouted and showed sign of vulgarism. In addition, the ticket booths were burnt and heavy vandalism was happening outside the stadium. There were sense of respect when our national anthem was played were they were just sitting down or walking around. It was 100k of audience at the beginning and at the end of the match it was only a mere of 200 audience.
The doping squad came just after the final whistle was blown and they wanted some samples. Why can’t they wait till the medal presentation ceremony. Do we see Lee Chong Wei or Fedderer going for doping just after the match ends.
I was with A.Jayakanthan (former national player) and he said that Indonesians never liked Malaysians especially in football.
Now for our team:
1. The target was too low by MSN and it didn’t match the sports association’s target of 60medals. End of the day we got 59, which is 2nd best haul outside Malaysia.
2. We had Aliyah young whom made history by becoming the youngest gold medal winner
3. Of course, football maintained/retained the gold medal. But some players, like fakir sharani and muslim need to be dropped. Fahmi was the real saviour of the team and my suggestion is to send him outside the country
4. The synchronised swimming was fantastic by grabbing all the gold medals
5. The diver could also ensured clean sweep if they participated in another event but it was great performance.
6. Alex Yoong and Philipa young made great come back and overall titles for water ski.
7. Sam Chong proved age is no barrier and came back from retirement to win a gold medal for us
8. Fencing team was no hopers but shocked everyone by grabbing 2 gold medals.
9. Archery team proved they are too strong for the rest.
10. Karate despite the sabotage by the MAKAF President and Malaysian official, they still grabbed 4 gold medal. Without Arivalagan, the team is going to screw up in future.
11. 6 gold from athletics was expected but 4x400M was the eye capture when they got it within 48 hours of arrival and not there for the medal presentation. Shahidan Kassim should step down.
12. Takraw became from bad to worse when they could not even secure a silver medal.
I can move to comment more, BUT what’s after this? We have London Olympics, Asian Games and Glasgow Games and we need to react now on this few ways:
1. Politicians should step down from their association positions
2. Local coaches should be given chance to guide the team
3. More state level competitions to be organised especially in aquatics
4. Proper exposures to be given to the athletes
For me, 59 gold medals is merely meeting expectations.
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