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DEWAN DISPATCHES: Lee Chong Wei becomes Permatang Pauh fodder

by: Azmi Anshar
DEWAN DISPATCHES Aug 19, 2008

Being Far East Asians and from the Western bulk of view, Malaysians have generally developed a physique which perfectly suits non-contact or semi-contact sports. Witness our world-beating qualities in squash, badminton, lawn bowl and archery, among others, and then witness our drabness in full-contact sports where power, beefiness, acceleration and strength are supremely contingent.

In the global sense, we are hopeless in football, meek in athletics, frustrating in rhythmic gymnastics, hockey, cycling and swimming, weaklings in rugby, uncultured in cricket, and overall, nowhere in the ranks of the global sports domination. Our sporting culture is as alive as plain cow’s grass and our parents would rather pressure their children to mug in maths, science, ballet and piano classes, rather than let them loose and happy in the playground and sporting fields.

Yet, we have a full time Minister and a Ministry lording over a slew of sporting associations where only a handful flourishes. Compare that to the United States, with its mega athletes winning, no…make that ‘manufacturing’, gold medals, don’t even need to have a Cabinet Minister for sports. But they do have a highly energised, multi-discipline sprawling sporting culture that rewards successful athletes into overnight multimillionaires (Carl Lewis, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and now Michael Phelps). For goodness sakes, the Americans have professional anglers (that’s fancy fishing for you and me) earning millions in prize money and endorsements!

Let’s also not compare ourselves with the Chinese. With a sporting pool of 1.3 billion potential athletes, a centralised obsession to factory-producing players and an authoritarian system that subjects athletes to complete submission in sporting excellence, is it a wonder that the Chinese hog the medal bragging rights in the Beijing Olympics, notwithstanding their deceptions in “digitising” fireworks, lip-synching cute eight-year-olds, or allegedly fielding underage female gymnasts.

Thirty to 40 years ago, two sports – football and hockey – were our pride and joy, beating the Japanese and the South Koreans as if they were Singaporeans and losing out in the semi-finals of the 1975 World Cup hockey. But that was when the world, or at least our Asian neighbours, was competing on a perceived level playing field. As they progressed by adopting new techniques, training, diet, facilities and national commitment and determination, we froze in a time-warp and if not for the glaring disparity, still frozen in that warp.

Badminton remains our last vestige of pride in the Olympics, Lee Chong Wei’s irresistible run to reach the final of the Olympics individual gold medal may be an unrepeatable achievement by itself, even if he meekly lost to the eventual champion, the brazenly proud Lin Dan, in an embarrassingly lopsided match that subverted Lee into a novice too overawed and giving too much reverence to the world’s No. 1.

What was missing in Lee’s game that he virtually gave away the match on Sunday? For starters, the reluctant killer instinct and absence of supreme confidence, which Lin Dan held in blasé abundance. Nobody likes to lose, the old sporting cliché goes, but Lee Chong Wei did not possess enough nerve, verve and panache to badly want to win, and he didn’t go down fighting to the death like he vowed. Not even the RM1 million reward guaranteed by the Government and RM5,000 lifetime monthly pension stimulated him enough to stage a vociferous comeback, at least to wipe out that irritating smirk off Lin Dan’s face.

But for Lee Chong Wei, being a silver medalist was good enough and being born in Bukit Mertajam, Penang, where the Permatang Pauh parliamentary by-election is being fought over a hellishly political firepit, is sumptuously better.

At Parliament House today, the Malaysian Olympic silver medalist cosied up with the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister where he enthralled attendees with his winning exploits against his wily opponents, shuttlers leading up to the semis, though it was likely that his anecdotes against the great Lin Dan was minimal. It was already a known fact that coming in second in any Olympic sport meant a RM300,000 cash reward and a RM3,000 lifetime monthly pension, so we know Chong Wei will soon be, deservedly, filthily loaded.

What was NOT known was that the reward presentation will fortuitously be held in Penang tomorrow night. "Since he is a Penang boy, we've decided to have a cheque presentation in the state,” Datuk Seri Najib Razak said after a 10-minute meeting with Lee at his Parliament office.

Co-incidence? Crass political exploitation? Why not? Penang boy Chong Wei getting the award in his home state is the perfect setting, except for that little by-election gig where Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is heavily involved. It should be noted that badminton-loving Anwar did write a bit in his blog about how he missed watching Chong Wei’s bouts, seeing that the ex-DPM is super busy campaigning to topple the BN government with some tricky defection game, priming himself as the Prime Minister-in-waiting and devising strategies to win Permatang Pauh, not necessarily in this order.

It was inevitable: Lee Chong Wei has, unwittingly or not, been made a fodder in this by-election battle.