Win at the SEA Games or lose cash: NSC

Win at the SEA Games or lose cash: NSC

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Malaysia's athletes have been warned that if they don't perform well at the Kuala Lumpur SEA Games next month they will lose state funding.

The National Sports Council (NSC), which backs 32 sports bodies, will slash funding to just 12 associations after the Southeast Asian Games from Sept. 7-18, newspapers reported Monday.

"We do not want to waste our money on all the associations," NSC director general Mazlan Ahmad was quoted as saying by The Star.

"There will be a major revamp in our role to develop sports in the country, and the sport which fails to convince us during the SEA games will be dropped."

The news would have galvanized -- or depressed -- the more than 270 Malaysian athletes who checked in at a national university campus Sunday for the last phase of centralized training.

They awoke Monday to be confronted by newspaper headlines warning: "No more funds for mediocrity" and "No money for under- achievers."

The Malaysia Amateur Athletics Union (MAAU) faced a separate story under a banner headline scorning its target of 16 gold medals at the SEA Games as "Unrealistic."

The Star said the NSC was so skeptical of the target that it had not included it in its total wish-list of 80 gold medals.

The Sun pointed out -- under the headline "Poor show by Malaysians" -- that at the two-day Singapore Open at the weekend, Malaysia's athletics team took just one gold medal -- against Thailand's 12.

Mazlan said 46 million ringgit (US$12 million) had been spent on 32 sports, excluding men's soccer, since 1999 to prepare for the SEA Games, and the NSC now wanted to concentrate on producing world-beaters for the Asian, Commonwealth and Olympic Games.