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.