Cross-Cultural Conversations

Observations by a Malaysian studying in Australia

Olympic Malaise-ians

 

The Athens Olympic has come to an end, and with it, any hope of a Malaysian contingent we can finally be proud of. I have to admit that living overseas, I do not have full knowledge regarding our athletes, but from newspaper reports, it seems that they never had any real ambition of giving a stellar performance.

Apparently, only one, Josiah Ng, had enough pride to feel ashamed at not winning a medal, and he was our best performing athlete, ranking sixth in the keirin event. The rest did not even bother to apologize to a country that expected so much from its Olympians.

 

On the contrary, they were very quick to find excuses for their pathetic failure. One even had the audacity to blame the hot weather for his lacklustre performance. Where does he think he come from? Antarctica?

 

Lame excuses are not the exclusive preserve of our uninspiring athletes. Sports officials went about repeating the same things we hear every time our athletes fail to win any medals, that “this sporting event should be seen as an opportunity for our athletes to measure themselves against competitors from other countries”, an avenue for them “to get a ‘feel’ for competitive environments” and worst of all, that losing “is not the end of the world”. Such misplaced tolerance for mediocrity deserves no place in our national psyche if we have any desire to be among the best in the world. Obviously not all of us do.

 

The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, despite decades of economic sanctions and political uncertainty, still managed to gain a respectable figure of four silvers and a bronze. The tiny Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago won a bronze.Why, even the impoverished African nation of Eritrea earned its way into the Olympic medal tally table. Malaysia did not even come close.

 

Our athletes are a reflection of our society, of our culture, of our national psyche. At the Olympics, as with any other sporting event, our athletes were a disgrace.

posted by: Tembaga2 at 06:41 | link | comments |