KUALA LUMPUR: It is time to show the Podium Programme the exit door after Malaysia failed yet again to be among the top-10 at the Indonesia Asian Games which ended on Sunday.
This was the opinion of former National Sports Council (NSC) director general Datuk Mazlan Ahmad.
Malaysia ended with seven gold, 13 silver and 16 bronze medals to finish 14th overall.
"The Podium must be stopped immediately, and there is no need to wait for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (Podium's target is to help Malaysia win their Olympic gold).
"This is because out of the 12 sports which won medals, we only won one Olympic level gold medal in track cycling," he said on Monday.
Mazlan proposed a smaller scale programme for track cycling to replace Podium if it is felt that the sport has a chance to deliver Malaysia's first gold in Tokyo.
"Just shut down the Podium and then let NSC take over high performance sports.
"Let the National Sports Institute (NSI) concentrate on sports science as required and there is no need for them to get involved in high performance sports," said Mazlan.
Mazlan said the Podium's expenditure is too high:
"I believe the experiment to place Podium under ISN should stop right now and place the high performance sports under NSC again."
For the record, Podium was launched in 2016 with a budget of RM75 million, placed under NSI.
And the target was to finish among the top-10 at this year’s Asian Games and Commonwealth Games as well as winning Malaysia's first gold medal in Tokyo.