Body defends Malaysia's performance
Body defends Malaysia's performance
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) has defended Malaysia's performance at the Southeast Asian Games in Thailand after Premier Mahathir Mohamad and senior sports officials criticized the contingent for a dismal show.
OCM president Khir Johari said he was happy with the Malaysian team's performance, although Mahathir and senior officials had described as dismal the 31-gold haul at the recently-concluded biennial regional games in Chiang Mai.
Some senior sports officials had even blamed Malaysia's French football coach Claude Le Roy for the team's failure to reach the semifinals of the games for the third consecutive time.
"We did well considering the circumstances. We must admit the Thais are much better and clearly a class above us," said Khir, who led the Malaysian delegation to the games, which ended Sunday.
Khir warned that the negative response and publicity would adversely affect younger athletes preparing for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur.
"What is needed at this stage is to keep calm and re-evaluate our position, " Khir said, adding that Malaysia had improved when it moved up to fourth position from fifth spot in the Southeast Asian Games in 1993.
Thailand emerged the champion in the overall medal tally with 157 gold medals in the games which saw 10 countries taking part.
Indonesia was in second spot with 77 gold medals and the Philippines third with 33 gold medals. Malaysia took fourth spot. Malaysia's National Sports Council had set a 50-gold target while the OCM had expected 40.
Last Saturday, Mahathir blamed the team's lack of patriotism and discipline for its dismal performance while Malaysia's deputy chef-de-mission Fadzil Othman said "Malaysian sports had no depth".
Even Sports Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had called for a review of the poor performance.
However, Khir said as far the OCM was concerned, the OCM had only set a 40-gold target for the Malaysian athletes.
"We worked towards the target and having failed to reach the target is no crime," he explained.