Sports bodies left to do some soul-searching
Sports bodies left to do some soul-searching
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (AFP): Southeast Asia's lack of athletic
class was laid bare at the region's biennial sporting showcase
here over the past week, prompting alarmed sports officials to do
some anguished soul-searching.
Malaysia led calls for radical Southeast Asian (SEA) Games
surgery amid spotty competition that saw 10 SEA Games track and
field records fall along with 22 in swimming, but which failed to
dent any world marks or Asian standards.
The 10 countries' half a billion people, which make up nearly
9 percent of the world's population, also managed to make a
mockery of some women's athletics events with only two
participants each in the 10km walk, the 5,000m run and the
javelin throw.
The two Asian Games record holders in Olympic sports among the
more than 2,000 athletes here -- swimmers Ratapong Sirisanont of
Thailand and Malaysia's Alex Lim -- did their share in setting
new SEA Games marks in the 200m men's individual medley and 100m
breaststroke respectively.
However both were off their times set at last year's Bangkok
Asian Games.
U.S.-based Singaporean swimmer Joscelin Yeo, who set six Games
records here, appeared to have made the best progress. Her coach
David Lim said her 1 minute 0.44 seconds effort in the 100m
butterfly made her the world's 16th best in the event.
Some Indonesians have achieved world-class status in archery
and badminton, and Thais and Filipinos have reached the lighter
classes of the Olympic boxing finals.
But some of the best gave the Brunei event a miss, notably
world-ranked Thai tennis star Tamarine Tanasugarn and Indonesian
shuttlers Mia Audina and Susi Susanti.
The gap with the rest of the world was particularly apparent
in SEA Games athletics.
Nunung Jayadi took the Games pole vault standard past the
five-meter barrier with a 5.05 meter effort last Wednesday. The
six-year-old Asian mark is 5.9m and Ukraine's Sergey Bubka's
world record is 6.14m.
Sporting standards suffer when member federations refuse to
send their best athletes, said Khalid Mohamad Yunis, president of
Malaysia's athletics federation.
"It defeats the purpose of having the Southeast Asian Games
every two years," he told AFP. The meet was founded 40 years ago.
Crisis
A wrenching economic crisis, which saw a plunge in living
standards in countries such as Indonesia, was no doubt partly to
blame.
The defending SEA Games champion, who gorged on 194 gold
medals in Jakarta two years ago, threw in the towel this year
and, with less than two full days of competition to go, had
racked up just 38 golds.
Their chef de mission offered to quit over the performance
that saw them relegated to third place.
"I know Indonesians are very unhappy over the whole episode,"
police general Mochammad Hindarto said Friday.
"I don't want to give excuses. I'm prepared to take the blame
for Indonesia's poor outing this time."
Wide gaps in class are also apparent within Southeast Asia.
Cambodia's men's basketball team set a new Games record on Friday
when they lost by a 103-point margin in a qualifying round tie
against the Philippines.
National Olympic Committee official Meas Sarin said the 84
athletes from Cambodia, an Indochinese nation still recovering
from war and genocide, were only in Brunei to be counted.
He said he was not disappointed, even though they were the
only contingent in the competition yet to win a medal of any
color.