Foul!

UPDATE 10pm:  The National Sports Institute is giving the opportunity for former athletes to share their experiences and be professional coaches through its latest National Coaching Certification Scheme, as reported by NST today.  Read full article here . ---- ORIGINAL ARTICLE On Sept 4, I wrote about life after sports for Malaysian athletes . It became a talking point among current and ex-national athletes which led to former table tennis player Chiu Soo Jiin confessing she struggled, cried for days after retiring as a sportswoman. The article was posted on Sept 5. On Tuesday, former national hurdler Noraseela Khalid alerted me to the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) athletes' commission workshop & athlete career programme scheduled on Nov 4 in UPM. The one-day event is organised by the OCM's athletes' commission and UPM's sports academy. Noraseela is OCM's athletes commission chairman.  She will be speaking at the forum...

HARESH SAYS, as published in Mailsport today. NAREN was excellent in athletics. Having recorded his achievements a decade ago, I believed he would have easily excelled at the national and international levels. Sadly, the Gombak lad threw away his spikes the minute he left school. “Cannot-lah bro, someone must work to pay the bills,” he said, when we bumped into each other recently. “There is no support system. There are many road races and marathons, but not short distance races. It’s difficult. So I decided to work and give up sprinting for good.” Naren is not alone. While the attention seems to be on the FA of Malaysia’s 50th congress this Sunday and the national shuttlers’ participation in the on-going Thomas Cup in New Delhi, athletics have taken a back seat. It does not help that the sport is still dominated by records set decades ago. Olympian Tan Sri M. Jegathesan’s 200m time of 20.9 seconds, set at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games sem...

National high jumper Lee Hup Wei (pic), 26, had said that he would not be participating in the Myanmar SEA Games as he had not fully recovered from his ankle injury. A gold medallist in the three previous SEA games, he was not listed by the Malaysian Athletics Union after failing to be one of the two top national high jumpers in the 89th Malaysian Open Athletics Championship last month. Read the full report here . Despite attempts to get national hurdler Noraseela Khalid to run in the regional Games next month although she failed to qualify, the experienced and opinionated athlete denied she had anything to do with any lobbying for her to partake in the event and went on to say that she should be setting her sights on bigger events - as reported in The Malay Mail on Oct 28. This brings about two previous articles - NSA v NSC: Who calls the shots? and the Olympic report by Tun Ahmad Sarji saying there is no room for laggards . It is clear that athletes like Hup Wei and Noraseel...

We live in a society where you don't need to be well educated or good at what you do to climb up the ladder, just a basic degree in 'bodek-logy' will do the trick. However, there isn't any reputable learning institution that offers such a course. It is high time we capitalise on this and start a programme, starting with a 9 month certificate course followed by a two-year diploma and a three year degree programme. We can get experts from most of the National Sports Associations (NSAs) to conduct the lectures. I'm sure they will be happy with the side income. The FA of Malaysia (FAM) is well known to shut the mouths of those who apparently "critise policy matters". Ask Reduan Abdullah and B.Satianathan. The Malaysia Athletics Union (MAU) has jumped on the bandwagon after the national body slapped national hurdler Noraseela Khalid ( pic ) with a show cause letter for allegedly "criticising the MAU management for not appreciating the services and sacrifi...

"There are too many problems in MAAU and there must be a major change in the association. The athletes are being humiliated and their futures will be buried if the association does not undergo major changes." - Noraseela Khalid after winning the 400m hurdles Sea Games gold medal yesterday. Read more here . The humiliation she speaks about is not only of that suffered by the 4x400m men's quartert who, despite winning the gold medal, were forced to go home without attending the prize presentation ceremony. Noraseela was shouted at by a Malaysian Amateur Athletics Union (MAAU) official not too long ago. The MAAU has come under fire for various reasons. There seems to be a clash of personalities within officials, athletes' constantly claim they are not well taken care of and allegations of favoritism between officials and athletes. Sadly, this has been going on for far too long and nothing has been done to put things in place. Perhaps when diplomacy fails, the athlete...