Our Sports: Failure not Luck

By admin-s Last updated Oct 6, 2014

When you aim low, you will naturally be satisfied when your achievement is not far off that low target.

A. Kadir Jasin

OUR sports officials set for themselves a modest target of eight gold at the just concluded Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea.

I say modest because there were 439 events at the games and we were a mid-level participants.

For that purpose of that very modest campaign, the country sent a 276-strong contingent headed by (Datuk) Danyal Balagopal Abdullah.

“It is just that in some events we were rather unlucky,” Balagopal

Alas, like the August Glasgow Commonwealth Games, the national contingent failed to achieve even this modest target.

They came home with only five gold medals and collected 14 silver and 14 bronze. In Commonwealth Games, the target was seven gold but they managed six.

That, according to a Sunday Star report, did not stop Balagopal from being satisfied. (Read more here).

I suppose when you aim low, you will naturally be satisfied when your achievement is not far off that low target. So five out of eight may not sound terribly bad.

To justify further the contingent’s lacklustre performance, Balagopal threw in what Malaysians are good at – blaming it on luck.

“It is just that in some events we were rather unlucky. Otherwise, it (eight-gold target) could have been achieved. I do not think that we made a mistake in setting eight as our target,” he told a press conference.

I guess, if our country’s sports officials, starting with Sports Minister, and their charges think that luck is important they should give up competitive sports and concentrate on gambling.

Then again, even in judi, I believe, knowledge and expertise are important.

Granted that we are not in the league of giants like China, the host South Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan and Iran, but to be beaten by smaller participants like Qatar, Bahrain and Hong Kong is an insult. MALU.

In terms of gold, Malaysia is on par with Singapore and Mongolia. Malaysians are very familiar with these two nations. Singapore has 5.6 million people and Mongolia three million.

Of course we are not bad at all if we compare ourselves to other low achievers and non-performers.