LETTER | After poor Paris 2024 outing, what next on the path to gold?

LETTER | The curtain has come down on the Paris Olympics 2024, with Team Malaysia concluding its journey with two bronze medals.

While we are proud of our national athletes clinching bronzes in two of the best comebacks in Malaysian Olympic history, we cannot deny the fact that Paris 2024 is the poorest performance of the Malaysian contingent since Athens 2004.

The gold medal is still elusive for Malaysia. Globally, we hold the unwanted reputation of being the country with the most number of Olympic medals without a gold.

This led to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim expressing the need for a new framework to improve the performances of our national athletes.

But do we really need another new framework?

Lack of talent pool

One of the most pressing issues within Malaysia’s sports system is the lack of a talent pool, and that is in part due to the unmet need for social security for athletes throughout their careers, hence hindering the participation of the new generation of potential talents.

How many times have we seen headlines showing the struggles of former professional athletes to make ends meet?

From an ex-national squash champion taking a cleaner’s job to earn a living, to a footballer selling his medals to survive, life after retirement is not smooth sailing for many of our national heroes and heroines.

The need for social security spans throughout the career of an athlete, extending beyond just increased pay and pension schemes post-retirement.

Several pain points can be identified in each stage of a Malaysian athlete’s career. There are two main issues, however, that require utmost attention:

1. Inadequate social protection

- Despite the contracting national athletes’ entitlement to Employees Provident Fund and Social Security Organisation contributions by the National Sports Council (NSC), the short career lifespan of an athlete renders this effort inadequate. The typical retirement age of an athlete falls within 28 to 32 years, while the retirement age to withdraw EPF savings is 55 years.

- Existing special assistance schemes provided by the National Athletes Welfare Foundation (Yakeb) are comprehensive but limited in value. For instance, a one-off aid amounting to RM1,500 being given to registered athletes who wish to pursue a degree is severely insufficient to meet the present high tuition fees.

2. Insufficient support for sports-to-work and sports-to-education transition

- NSC’s Malaysian Athlete Career and Education (Mace), which is a programme dedicated to assisting athletes in education, career and welfare, lacks publicly available, detailed information about its programmes and support.

- Adding to this, consultations with a former national athlete revealed that they see no formalised and structured system to retain retired athletes as part of the sports ecosystem in Malaysia. This raises a question: Is Mace still functioning as it was primarily established for?

- Existing scholarship schemes for athletes, be it from the public or private sectors, are not adequate to meet athletes’ needs in their post-retirement phases. Most of them are only for athletes who are still in the national programme, meaning they must either struggle to balance both sports and education or lose their chance at funding their education if they focus solely on sports.

Revamp existing system

More needs to be done for our athletes. Malaysia does not need a new system, but rather a revamp of existing ones to be more effective and accountable.

We already have agencies and programmes specially established to provide welfare for our professional athletes. Hence, the Youth and Sports Ministry should focus on empowering them to be fit for purpose:

1. Streamlining processes and empowering Yakeb and the Mace programme

- Mandate more transparency and accountability in reporting and information availability to maximise the benefits for retired athletes.

- Expand Yakeb’s membership to state athletes.

- More long-term, continuous support as compared to one-off initiatives.

- For instance, Mace could set a standard athlete-to-sports pathway for athletes interested in pursuing coaching, research, and management within the sports industry or collaborate with companies and organisations in various industries to set programmes for job matching and opportunities for the athletes.

- To meet the dual demand of education and sports, Mace could provide scholarship matching services to facilitate the application for financial aid for B40 and M40 athletes and encourage scholarship schemes to set criteria to include retired and older athletes.

Singapore’s Sport Excellence framework which focuses on supporting their athletes in different facets of their lives, has been up and running since 2013.

Since its implementation, there has been a steady increase in Singapore’s index of World Sports Ranking10.

With a better social security plan in place, more talents would be interested in considering sports as a full-time career.

They would then be able to give their all towards the sports, and hopefully, this would set more national athletes on the track to gold.

The writers are Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan, Bor Neng Quan, Shaheerol Izuan Nor Mazlan and Sia Wan Hui, who are Universiti Malaya undergraduates.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.