As my 1st post, I think we need to establish what this site stands for and how I aim to achieve it, with a lot of your help. It's about Malaysian Sport and how we CAN improve it. Together, it's us Malaysians against the world for the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, SEA Games, The Olympics, the World Cup and any and every sport we take part in. How CAN we be better? How CAN we succeed? How can we become that WINNING nation with a winning mentality in all that we do in sports. Hopefully it will spread to other areas as well, but right now, the pure simple idea is, LETS' WIN!
So with that in mind, this blog will focus on how we can better serve our sports, the athletes, the management, the finances, the fans and OUR COUNTRY.
If we've lost, haven't won, didn't achieve our goals, it means something went wrong. The preparation, the fitness, the strategy, the funding, the fans and even right down to that dreaded four letter word, LUCK.
First however, let's look at the winning mentality. This means focus, preparation, mental strength and a team of people dedicated to winning. And this preparation begins from an early age. Parents are key in this process as they are in anything in our lives. Andre Agassi hit 2500 tennis balls a day because his dad determined if he did that daily, he would hot a MILLION tennis balls a year. And he started this at age 7. World class athletes start early. Our sports administrators NEED to understand this. The current school system is biased towards providing pupils who are exam orientated. And the teachers are more interested in giving tuition after school than teaching sports out on a hot padang. So it's imperative that our sports administrators recognise this and more importantly, ACT on it.
Political will for this kind of success is lacking and the few and far between world class athletes we have, did it with their parents support. I take my hat of to Shalins', Nicols' and Azlan's parents, just to name a few.
One thing I have noticed is that proper nutrition in this great country of food, is definitely lacking. Sportsmen and women need vitamins, good food and proper nutrition for the body to recover and recuperate as well as perform at the highest level. Parents and kids need this guidance from an early age or world class performances will never be seen. With all the information available today on the net, its' quite easy for us net-savvy people to get at it, but the real athletes are unfortunately from the rural areas and this information needs to reach them.
So to summarize for this 1st post of mine, WINNING starts at home, our home, our state, our country, with attitude, knowhow, hunger to succeed and proper accolades for those who DO succeed. Encourage them to do better, never pat them on the back and say its' enough to win district, state and national events, remember its' US against the world, when it comes to sport at least.
