GOLD COAST: Is Malaysian diving going downhill?
For the first time since the 2006 Melbourne edition, the national divers failed to win an individual medal and their haul of one gold and two bronze does not augur well as they did better in the 2010 (New Delhi) and 2014 (Glasgow) editions.
In New Delhi and Glasgow, the divers managed hauls of 1-1-2 and 1-2-1, respectively.
Pandelela Rinong won the women’s 10m platform individual gold in 2010 with Ooi Tze Liang matching her achievement in 2014 in the men’s 3m springboard.
Yeoh Ken Nee was Malaysia’s first individual medallist, a silver in the men’s 1m springboard at the 2006 (Melbourne) edition.
This time, Cheong Jun Hoong-Pandelela won the 10m platform synchro title while Leong Mun Yee-Nur Dhabitah Sabri contributed two bronze medals (10m platform and 3m springboard synchro).
Pandelela and reigning world champion Jun Hoong were targeted for a medal in the platform individual, but both failed to make the podium.
It is easy to offer an excuse that the divers are under new coaches, who have their own training ideas and philosophy, but the reality is the team should have done better than Glasgow as divers like Pandelela, Jun Hoong and Nur Dhabitah are world class.
National men's diving coach Christian Brooker wants the divers to express themselves in competitions without the fear of being reprimanded for executing bad dives.
"The key is that coaches must support their divers whether they execute good or bad divers. Our divers need to focus on what they are doing without thoughts of what their coaches are going to do after their dives," said Brooker.
"Competitions like the Commonwealth Games add pressure to divers and we as coaches, want them to feel comfortable. If they mess up a dive, they can still bounce back in the following attempts without being worried of the consequences.
"Diving is an ongoing thing. Everyone tries to improve in diving in hope of being perfect and to do that, they work on their limitations in training."
Brooker has come up with a sustainable-concept programme to make sure his divers keep improving accordingly in the coming years.
"We do not want them to burnout when they are young. We do not want to injure our divers by pushing them too hard and too quickly in training," said Brooker.
Whether Brooker's training concept would work in Malaysia remains to be seen.
Former coach Yang Zhuliang implemented China's way of regimented training to get the best out of the divers.
To be fair, Brooker and national women's coach Zhang Yukun should be given more time to produce quality divers.
"We have quality divers in the national junior team. We are grooming them accordingly and I believe we will have a huge pool of top divers soon,” the Australian added
While the women’s team produced results here, the men failed to make an impact.