Comment: MNCF should ride more with mountain biking

2009/11/28

Arnaz M. Khairul

SEVERAL years ago, a young Lim Yew Meng contemplated quitting cycling after facing a ban for racing in a non-sanctioned mountain bike event. There were those who sympathised with the youngster, who was then the country's top cross country rider, while others thought he should have obeyed the rules of the Malaysian National Cycling Federation (MNCF) and simply not raced.

At that point too, some asked just how many mountain bike events there were in the country for riders to compete in. There were just three serious ones.

So, we could hardly blame a race-starved Yew Meng for facing the ban risk as he competed in one of the only few races in his own backyard of Kuala Lumpur.

There were no structured junior development programmes apart from those run by states, funded by their Malaysia Games budgets. Till today, these programmes are still absent.

Thus the discipline merely lived on the sidelines and there were just a handful of those who stayed focused on it, while even the MNCF showed it was more preoccupied with other things.

National teams have never been adequately supported. Well, nowhere near what their road and track counterparts have enjoyed.

This year, when the elite track and road programmes were taken up and funded by the National Sports Council, a "freed" MNCF began looking into raising the profile of mountain biking.

It is the obvious thing to do for the MNCF. It is one of the few things left for them apart from addressing the serious decline in interest in indoor cycling the past decade.

And if it had just opened MNCF eyes, mountain biking has a significant number of active followers. The fact is there are more mountain bikes sold around the country than road or track bikes.

This doesn't make the task of raising the profile of mountain biking all that difficult.

That is unless the MNCF chooses to go down the old road of being mere enforcers, simply taking those who cross their path to task, instead of really joining forces with all those who are in it for the development of the sport.

In fact, there are already a number of new events popping up around the country where mountain bikers, at the very least, have shots at racing. They should be MNCF's partners rather than foes or subjects.

Mountain biking, seriously, has a place in the mainstream of Malaysian cycling, but it is up to the MNCF to first open up and be more welcoming.

If races are unsanctioned, then the federation should work with the organisers to get them properly recognised, and not charge them with unrealistic sanctioning fees, so much that it affects the well being of the event.

It is just a matter of humans connecting with each other to make things work for the betterment of the sport. And seriously, the MNCF is capable of doing that.

Without a medal to show from their previous outing in the Sea Games, let's just hope the national team at the Laos Sea Games that begin next week give the sport a boost it needs to get what hopefully will transform into a new era rolling.