Malaysia related posts:
Yatching: Kevin Lim’s Road to Beijing
The Money Report: Malaysia’s Incentives for Olympic Medalists
Malaysian Athletes Bound for Beijing

1. The Malaysian Yatching Association did not register anyone for the last yatching Olympic qualifying event held in Australia

2. Kevin, acting on his own, pleads with the organizers to accept his registration

3. He earns an Olympic slot when he placed 15th overall. In effect, Malaysia also earns a slot to the Olympics

4. He has been training for the Beijing Olympics ever since he qualified

5. The MYA announces that it will hold a selection sail-off to pick the country’s representative. [It turns out that for Olympic sailing, the national association has a right to name any sailor to fill a qualified spot, which need not be the sailor who earned the spot.]

6. The selection event is scheduled in June which, according to Kevin, will “compromise any athlete’s ability to peak again two months later during the Olympics”.

If the MYA insists on its selection sail-off, Kevin has to overcome another hurdle before he makes it to Beijing. Maybe he won’t make it at all.

We don’t know about you but we kinda feel for the guy here; he was the one who qualified after all.

But does Malaysia give incentives to athletes who win an Olympic medal as Azerbaijan does? The answer is yes. This is the current incentive scheme according to Malaysia’s staronline:

Under the current NSC incentive scheme, an Olympic gold is worth RM160,000 while it is RM80,000 for a silver and RM40,000 for a bronze.

The pension scheme that takes effect after the athlete retires currently awards RM3,500 for a gold, RM1,500 for a silver and RM1,000 for a bronze.

However, expect Beijing medalists to receive higher amounts as sports officials recently agreed to raise the incentives since the current one is “too low compared to what some countries are giving”.

To date, Malaysia has the following Olympic medalists:

* Cheah Soon Kit and Yap Kim Hock: silver medal, badminton men’s doubles, 1996 Atlanta Olympics

* Rashid Sidek : bronze medal, badminton men’s singles, 1996 Atlanta Games

* Jalani Sidek and Razif Sidek: bronze medal, badminton doubles, 1992 Barcelona Games

To date, 20 Malaysian athletes from eight sport disciplines qualified for Beijing; another nine, from badminton, are “almost certain to make the grade”.

Malaysia is banking on its badminton shuttlers to end a 12-year Olympic medal drought.

Some of Malaysia’s Beijing-bound athletes include: national walker Yuan Yufang, women divers Leong Mun Yee, Pandelela Rinong and Elizabeth Jimie; men’s track cylists Azizul Hasni Awang, Mohd Edrus Yunus, Rizal Tisin and Junaidi Nasir; men’s rapid fire pistol shooter Hasli Izwan Amir Hasan; and cyclist Josiah Ng.

RELATED:
Malaysia Money Report
Former Olympians Displeased
The Olympic Torch in Malaysia

PHOTO CREDIT/INFO SOURCE: OCM Blog.

We mentioned earlier that Nader Al Masri gets financial support consisting of $100 per month from the Palestinian Athletics Federation.

Azerbaijan, as we stated here, allocated the following medal incentives to its athletes during the 2004 Athens Olympiad:

Gold: AZN 100,000 and NOC–AZN 50,000
Silver: AZN 50,000 and NOC AZN 30,000
Bronze: AZN 25,000 and AZN 20,000

Reports have it that these amounts will be increased in Beijing but we don’t know by how much. By the way, for those of you who must know, AZN 100,000 is equal to USD 120,700.06 according to this currency converter.

Meanwhile, here’s the Olympic Council of Malaysia’s blog is reporting that Malaysian athletes who qualified for the Olympics received “RM5,000 from the National Sports Council (NSC) for earning qualification on merit for the Beijing Olympics”

Said athletes are also entitled to a monthly allowance of RM1,000, which is paid from the time they qualify until end of August.

In case you are wondering, RM stands for Malaysian Ringgit; Rm1,000 is equivalent to US$318.557 according to this currency site.

So Malaysian athletes are, in terms of state financial support, better off than their Palestinian counterparts.

Stay tuned as we look for the money report for other countries.

Update: A listing of financial incentives to Olympic athletes from different countries is published at How Much Money Do Olympians Make.

RELATED:
Azerbaijan: Incentives for Athletes
Palestinian Authority

No it isn’t about pro-Tibet activists protesting against China although there was some of that. It’s about how former Olympians were ignored by the torch relay organizers.

Isthiaq Mubarak, who represented Malaysia in Mexico, Munich, and Montreal shares his feeling about the matter:

“There were so many torch bearers who were not even part of the Olympics but were included while people like me who has been inducted into the Hall of Fame was not even considered. Where is the Olympism?”

Ahh, we gotta feel for Isthiaq. And he is not alone. Here’s Asian Games bronze medalist Rajemah Sheikh Ahmad and the wife of former Olympian Kamaruddin Maidin:

“My husband represented the country in the 1960 Rome Olympics but the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) did not even have the courtesy to invite him to witness the run, let alone become a torchbearer. I would not mind if there were too many former Olympians that my husband had to be left out but when I saw the list, I was shocked.

Since when did astronauts, someone who went on a solo expedition to the North Pole, Inspector-General of Police, director-general of the National Sports Council, National Sports Institute and Youth and Sports Ministry secretary general and Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir became Olympians?”

Since when indeed? Those Malaysian sports authorities, they have some explaining to do.

Source: Beijing 2008

The torch goes next stop to Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo source: Beijing 2008.