Olympic Postmortem
OLYMPIC POSTMORTEM: The RM100M FLOP
By Arnaz M. Khairul
September 1, 2004, NST: Olympic Postmortem
More than RM105 million has been spent in the last two years to turn Malaysians into Asian and world class athletes. So what went wrong in Athens? That is the question which the Cabinet wants answered. At their weekly meeting, the ministers discussed the poor performance of the contingent at the 2004 Olympics.
(Sir, nothing had gone wrong. Everything had happen exactly what we had planned for - that is, to fail miserably; at each and every olympic, and each and every RM100 million we spent to ensure that the results we had achieved was within expection, which confirmed the fact that the officials that make it happen will have their contracts extended for another 4 years to prepare the next batch of flops. Failure results was what we planned for, and we should consider that we actually had succeeded to ensure it did happen and had happened.)
(As the saying goes, we don't fail to plan, we planned to fail, and we spent luxuriously to ensure that the contingent of officials will be rewarded graciously for the results. Nothing can changed that fact!)
Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Azalina Othman Said said: "The Cabinet is very concerned after spending so much. (Wait for another year and you will hear Azalina putting up another much, much bigger budget for the cabinet's approval of the next olympic contingent. Is the government really concerned about the spending of hundreds of millions? It can't be, as the money were spent more on politican and their big idea in the name of sports. Check out all the sports association; do an analysis of the management and compare with the Europeans, Americans, China, Indonesia and Thailand - you will discover the profound knowledge of all the decades of outcome we had achieved in sports.)
"The Cabinet has directed me to prepare a report about Athens and also on the ministry's long-term plans to produce elite athletes under the Gemilang 2006 programme," said Azalina. The report will be ready in seven days. (WOW, that's fast!!!! Within 7 days, we will have the answer to our problem and the solution to it, extremely efficient, my God!)
She said: "From what I saw in Athens, our athletes were well skilled (Madam, it should be well skilled within the context of Malaysian standard). So, this means that they have been given the adequate training. (Can continuous failures by the atheletes and sportsmen be construed as adequately trained??? My God, I wonder if you do understand the meaning of the word "Adequate")"We have to look towards developing a winning formula for our athletes.'' The Ministry has also requested a more detailed evaluation from each of the nine sports associations whose athletes represented the country in the Olympics.
The Gemilang 2006 programme is currently in its second phase, and it involves 535 athletes. Only the best athletes will be kept in the programme for the final phase before the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar. The first phase — from 2002 until last December — saw a total of 733 athletes being involved in the programme.
Azalina said, despite the failure of the Olympic contingent in general, the performances of two athletes — cyclist Josiah Ng and 14-year old diver Bryan Nickson Lomas — were commendable. (THIS, SHE CAN BE PROUD OF because there is nothing better than this mediocre results to justify for the 100 million spent!!!)
The cartoon picture in The Star depicts the line:
"Malaysia Sweeps in Shooting Excuses." - would the Olympic council will consider giving a gold medal for shooting excuses?, Then, we would had at least one gold medal to celebrate.
Azalina said, ....at least, "sekurang-kurang nya", a little result can be construed as a "Success" within our Malaysia-Boleh Ideology. And this is good consolation for Malaysian sports and the Sport Minister - Welldone boys and girls; keep it up, and try to do better; if not, at least, be better than the last time when you had done badly. There will be another $100 million (probably 200 million) for your next failure; keep trying. And sorry for those who need university education, our government don't have any allocation for them as we are reserving those money for the officials and the sportsmen and sportswomen who need them badly to pay for overseas training expenses, shopping, and holidays in preparation for Beijing Olympic and there are more seductive chicks in Beijing.
THE SOLUTION:
Results do not come by because we spent hundreds of millions. To achieve result, we had to built AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM; the system that would include the sports ministry's 100% commitment to success, sport associations and their mechanism of operation, schools sports system which turns students into champions (the coaches must be professional sportsmen), our infrastructure must be adequate (that is, every state and schools must have the basic neccessities and include the coaching system), the management system and the sports maintenance system (including sports medicine, insurance and utilities), the processes within each and every system that is design to meet the mission (initiating, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and close-out processes), the people (irrespective of races and religion, their needs, their wants and their passion must be considered within the system design), the culture of winning (and not just participating), the passion and love for the game (which consumes pain, stress and frustrations), the regular monitoring and tracking of progress and proper installation of specific and clear milestones of the required performance level, the proper benchmarking of each and every sportsmen against the world-class competitors and the monitoring system that is capable to collect and update datas of our sportsmens progress and the progress of our international competitors. (We progress but the competitors are also progressing too. The problem is we progress by 10% and the competitors progress by 50%.)
If we want to see good results in sports, remove all politicians from the sports associations and decision-making process such as, selecting participants, the methods of training, disciplinary actions, etc; all these should be left to the coaches that we had hired to produce the results. The sports ministry should only be the financial sponsors, selecting full-time sports managers (preferably foreigners so that they have no political linkages and they won't use the sports fund for political patronage and expenses) who will monitor the system as it progress and auditing the system results; The sport ministry will be the authority to approve the budget allocation and to protect the sportsmen and officials (officials must be professionals of the given game, preferably full-time).
Sending sportsmen overseas may not be the best solution, as it is extremely costly and only few sportmens gets the chance. Bring in the managers and coaches from overseas but give them the "gun with the bullets." Empower them and monitor them. Be result oreinted with the coaches and managers. Set regular time-frame and milestone of achievement. If they don't meet the mark by 80% and above, sack them. But the facilities and infrastructure must be there for the coach to perform with their proteges. Hands-off the coaches and let them manage their work effectively. Another point to consider: scrap all those stupid words and rhetorics like gemilang programme, dream team, tiger squad, crocodile squad, etc that Dr. Deming says is philosphically damaging to the sports itself. Don't award sportsmen and sportswomen of the year based on their local performance but dismal international performance (such as Olympic, Asian games, world games and world cups). Sportsmen & sportswomen should only be awarded and given due recognition for their consistent high performance and their commitments & passions of winning in international events such as Olympic, Asian Games, and World Cups. Consider setting up a Sports University.
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