The Beijing Olympics has been one of the best games to date. The Chinese really pulled it off to give the best games to the world from all aspects. What impressed me the most is the performance of the Chinese contingent who finished the games with the biggest haul of gold medals knocking off the usual suspects in games which they normally watch the Americans,Germans,Russians occupy the winners podium.
This is not something that happened over night. The Chinese we getting ready for this games a long time before even deciding that they wanted to bid for the games. I still remember getting emails of kids that were trained to be gymnast in China, these were really little kids who were drilled of the basics of a respective sport and pushed to the limits and only those who made it on top of those classes went on to make the next levels to represent the nation. The athletes were then given exposure in countries around the world to be on top of the games before been chosen to represent the nation.
Who would have ever thought the Chinese would challenge in weight lifting?
Who would have thought the Jamaicans were sweep clean the sprint events?
I’m baffled in the kind of reception that Lee Chong Wei received when he came back with a silver medal. Yes, without a doubt i think he did well to come back with a medal but seriously…Badminton is our bread and butter sport! That is something that we must win a few medals by default!! Chong Wei should have been rewarded for his achievements and not over doing it.You don’t want to give the other sportsmen and women the impression that winning is about rewards!!Identify sports which Asians can perform well in, sports which the physiques of a Asean can do well in and focus on those. Maybe its time to look elsewhere and forget about our historically “favourite sports”
Honestly, have a think about the sports that are popular amongst Malaysians and look at how we fare on it today :
Hockey – 14th in the world (we used to be world beaters!)
Football – 162nd in the world (i better not comment)
Sepak Takraw – Is there world ranking for this one??
Ironically squash is not amongst our favourite games and we have Nicole who is the world No 1 for 3 years in a row.
I’m disappointed with our poor outing during the Olympics and we could have done much much better in other sports! The games that i think we should focus on are
- Atlethics
- Weight Lifting
- Equestrian
- Shooting
- Archery
These are sports that i think Asians should be doing well because physiques is not exactly up the priority except weight lifting which i believe Asians can ace!
