First of all, I’m sure we Malaysian (and our Singaporean counterpart) have been bombarded with the news of how Joseph Schooling won gold medal and how he beat Michael Phelps his idol (who can miss that photo) on social media. And by now, surely there will be people also talking about how Malaysia, as a country few times the Singapore population was beaten by its neighbour to get their first Olympic gold medal and how that’s evidence that BN is ruining the country blah blah blah.

A bit of a disclaimer, I will refrain from talking politics in this article (and would appreciate if you could don’t in comments below). The info that I cite below, many of them would be sourced from the internet so if there are any factual errors, feel free to point out (e.g. I never know Joseph Schooling in person so if his profile in Wikipedia is wrong, you can’t really expect me to know about it).

A Singaporean success (or not)

Let’s start with the golden boy of Singapore. Joseph Issac Schooling (JS), a son of an Eurasian father born in Singapore and a Malaysian Chinese mother (thank God no one has dared to link him with Malaysia yet). He was born in Singapore, studied there and continued his education in US and now he’s the first gold medallist for Singapore.

Singaporeans will no doubt feel proud about him but once you let the feeling sink in, is his success really a product of Singapore? Yes he’s a native Singaporean so Olympic rules dictate that the gold to be credited to Singapore as a country but a quick look at his life and you just can’t help but feel that the secret of his success really lies beyond just his home country.

2 success stories, same story arc

Trained to swim from 3, JS was said to exhibit extraordinary talent from young. So after completing his primary and 2 years of secondary education in Singapore, he moved to US at age of 14, attended the famed Bolles School, then University of Texas where he trained with the Texas Longhorns swimming team, one of the top collegiate swim programmes under two-time United States Olympic men’s head coach Eddie Reese.

Such story is not limited to JS in Singapore. Our own squash queen, Nicol David have similar success story. Training since age of 5, she was enrolled in a proper coaching setup by the age of 8.  She started winning all her age group title (including World Junior Championships). At age 19, she failed to defend her title in the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, a title she won at the age of 15. She decided to move to Amsterdam to train under coach Liz Irving from Australia. From then on, she never look back as she transformed from a child prodigy to the all conquering queen of squash.

So what’s their secret of success

By now, probably you could guess where I’m going. Yes JS was born in Sinagpore, got great support from his Singaporean parents and finish part of his education in Singapore (where he also got some support from Monash University and Singapore Sports Council). But one of his career changing decision was when he decided to move to US. Unlike Southeast Asia, US housed many of the greatest swimmers in the world across all age groups. And it wouldn’t be surprising if they have the best facilities, training programs and coaches over there. It was this competitive environment of training that shapes who he is today. 7 most important years so far of his development there, you could say that JS swimming success is as American as it is Singaporean.

Similarly for Nicol, a Malaysain training in an unpopular sports (sorry squash fans), you can only imagine how limited the support she was given over the years. Even looking at the age when she started training and winning titles, those of you who went through the government schooling system can surely understand that these are efforts and investments by her own parents rather than our Malaysian schools or state. And training under an Australian coach in Netherlands was also arguably the defining moment to turn her promising career to a legendary one.

They can inspire a generation, but their influence stops there

Success story always inspires. Just reading Singapore news website and you can smell the optimism. The school kids saying they want to be the next Olympians, politicians saying that there’s more to come etc. But the cold hard reality is that the hype will die, they always do. And after the hype, what the country does to support the sports will determine whether it is a one-off individual success or a sustainable one.

A new era of sports

We live in an era when competitive sports mean literally what it is, competitive. With the advent of sports science, nutritional diets, perfecting of techniques, widespread corporate or state sponsored funding, it is an era where you can’t just get by with pure natural talent. You need money, technology, human resources etc. to cut your teeth with the best.

In most of the countries that enjoy sporting success, it was a result of multi-decades of meticulous planning and execution by various quarters. Parents, grassroot coaches, schools, states and corporate all play their part in promising young athletes even before they are even selected for the national team. And the journey doesn’t stop there. Being the best in your country doesn’t mean the best in the world. These young athletes will train with the best foreign coaches and the best of the foreign peers before eventually dominating the world arena.

So how can Malaysia win their own gold medal (if they don’t in Rio 2016)

There are multiple steps to go and the results will not be evident for years. But if Malaysia wants to be a global sporting powerhouse, these are the basic steps (which are interlinked) we need to accomplish.

1) Engagement of parents

Young athletes rely on their parents’ support. Over the years, I have seen so many promising young athletes in Malaysia never receive proper training or after achieving initial success, drop off from the sports when they go for high school/college/university.

Can you blame the parents? Not when they don’t see a career pathway for their child. Not when they see limited support from our local schools and states. JS and Nicol have supportive parents who are willing to invest in their career since young but can all parents do that? Tuition fees in Bolles School cost $47,000 a year, how many parents can be expected to fork out that sum to further their child’s career?

So parents need to be convinced that there will be funding to help their kid to train to be better and at the same time, they also need to be convinced that there is a sporting career, one where their kids won’t end up having difficulties in life after they retire.

2) Grassroot talent identification

We need to identify talents and we need to identify them young. For example, young kids as young as 5 in European countries are often spotted and train with the football academy of their local football clubs. For Malaysia, we simply don’t have that kind of culture so the easiest and readily available scouting network would be our schools.

School teachers or coaches need to identify youngsters who are talented and allow them to compete with the best. There’s no point letting them breaking school record after another where these talents would probably feel bored after some time. School coaches also may not have the expertise to properly train them so grouping the talented athletes for centralised training would be the logical step to help them improve further.

3) Sponsor and funding

Federal and state funding is highly essential. Like I said, this era of sports is so competitive that institutional support is not optional but a must. Can you imagine my bewilderment when our national diving coach has to bring our athletes to train in China for short stints because we simply don’t have proper diving facilities in Bukit Jalil??? The facilities were simply not up to international standards and actually posed a safety hazard for our divers. This issue only received publicity after Pandelela won the bronze medal in 2012 London Olympics. Even as one of the target sports for 2012 Olympics, our diving facilities are so poor. Can you imagine the state of other non-targeted sports?

Best facilities, best coaches, these are the basic essentials to produce the best athletes. No offense but if we keep on relying on local coaches who achieved limited success as athlete last time, what can you expect? Most Chinese badminton coaches are multiple world champions, same applies to other sports. Our diving team started to improve considerably after hiring a Chinese coach, same for cycling. So race, nationalities etc have no place in sports if you want to improve. Yes hiring best coaches and investing in facilities all costs money, but if we expect success without investment, that’s not called success, that’s called a miracle.

When government funds are limited, corporate sponsor should fill the gap. The ministry should engage corporate to fund certain sports or athletes. In return, the athletes’ success would be good publicity for the corporates. But what we often see if that after certain athletes achieve success, the corporate sponsors flock to him/her alone. With so many GLCs around, surely there are funds available to help sponsor some sports or athlete. And when the athletes become successful and the corporate enjoy the benefits of sponsorship, then they will look for other promising talents to sponsor and then there will be more successful athletes, the virtuos cycle will continue.

4) Mix with the best

You can provide the best coaches and best facilities but if certain athletes are simply ahead of the crop, special attention should be given. To quote JS himself on how training in US helps his career, “I think the environment in the US is more suitable for competitive sports because everyone is so competitive and wants to win. I’m not saying that people don’t want to win in Singapore but it is just more electrifying with a higher tempo in the US.”

Similar to the business world, sports cannot afford to be closed-door anymore. We need to engage the best, train with the best. It’s only when we compare with the best we learn of our deficiencies. Just like how JS trained with the best young swimmers in US, our athletes need to be exposed as well.

For example, our Harimau Muda project (which was disbanded subsequently) was supposed to spearhead our Olympics and World Cup dream. But instead of sending promising talent to train with Western countries or better Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, these youngsters train in Malaysia and play in the Malaysian and Singapore leagues. Youth leagues here last 3 months a year playing around 20 matches compared to around 50 much higher-quality matches played a year in countries such as Japan. Repeat it year over year and the quality gap will be even more evident.

Even for our badminton, the sports with highest hope, we have so many world junior champions that we even lost count of them. But none of them went on to become world champion after turning professional. It was said that once they got promoted into the national team, they mix with those shuttlers who underachieved and have bad attitudes and habits (not everyone is Lee Chong Wei) and these rub off on them. This potentially explains the dearth of talent that we see in badminton. Even if our Datuk Lee wins a gold medal in Rio, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t qualify for men’s singles for Tokyo Olympics after he retires. If a pot of soup turned sour, you don’t pour fresh ingredients into it and hope it will turn out ok. Instead you brew a fresh pot. Same thing with our badminton team, if the current group underachieves, there’s no point of the younger talents training together with them.

5) Career pathway

Athlete’s career lifespan is extremely short. Most would have retired in their 30s and some unfortunate ones could even carry injuries with them. Malaysian athletes need to understand the importance of education for their life after sports whereby they should be given opportunity to study at certain stage. Good athletes can also go for training badges and courses and return as coaches.

If athletes know that they will be given adequate opportunities to support themselves not only during their prime but also after their retirement, this will give confidence to young promising athletes to immerse themselves in the world of sports. Back to the first point, parents would also be more supportive if they know their child have a life beyond sports after they retire.

Conclusion

Compared to other countries, our sports development is terribly lagging behind. The sporting culture and mentality is simply not there. Until there’s strong political will from top to bottom and implement some or all of the steps above, I’m afraid Malaysia will be eternal spectators as other smaller countries continue to move above us in the pecking order of sporting success.