KUALA LUMPUR: It's time to wake up and smell the coffee as the Malaysian contingent returned from a poor outing at the Hanoi Sea Games.
Though the Malaysian contingent exceeded their 36-gold medal target with a haul of 39 gold, 45 silver and 90 bronze, it was nothing to shout about.
That is as the nation set a low target to begin with. As a result, Malaysia didn't even finish in the top five in the medal standings.
Instead of raising the bar, Malaysian sports lowered it, and in the end, they were able to hop over the target.
Even "little Singapore" finished on top of Malaysia in the overall standings. The only other time in the 63-year-old history of the biennial Sea Games that Malaysia were not in the top five was in 1983 in Singapore.
Malaysia's 39 gold amounts to only 7.43 per cent of the total gold medals offered. So little for a nation that claims to have one of the best sports infrastructures in Southeast Asia.
Hosts Vietnam emerged overall champions with a haul of 205-125-116, winning 39.05 per cent of the 525 gold medals contested.
Runners-up Thailand had 15.54 per cent of the gold (92-103-136), Indonesia 13.14 per cent (69-91-81), and the Philippines 9.9 per cent (52-70-104) and Singapore 8.95 per cent (47-46-73).
Sports analyst Dr Pekan Ramli was scathing in his assessment of the Malaysian Sea Games contingent.
"Malaysia won more gold medals than their target but at the same time, they finished below Singapore in sixth spot among 11 countries.
"How could this be accepted as a success when this is Malaysia's worst ever result in Sea Games history? said Pekan.
"Athletics delivered five gold medals and swimming produced only one gold. Singapore won 21 gold in swimming and Vietnam had 22 gold medals from track and field. These are sports that previously delivered the most medals for our contingent.
"Athletics is rated as successful after winning five gold. For me, the rating of the contingent is irrelevant when we only won a fraction of the medals. We finished below Singapore, a country with a smaller population than us.
"We need to target emerging as overall champions. We achieved it as the host in 2001 and 2017, we are mere 'jaguh kampung'.
"We should not be using the Sea Games as a platform to expose young athletes. We should be winning. We can see other countries' young athletes performing.
"We really need to do a lot of soul searching and come out with programmes to reclaim our stature in Southeast Asia.
"We should not be giving the reason of using the Sea Games to expose athletes anymore," said Pekan.
Universiti Putra Malaysia sports centre head Dr Hanafiah Ayub said: "Accountability is needed from the athletes and we also need to see if the right athletes are selected to compete for the country.
"Some of the sports need a reset, they need to start afresh with their programmes to produce results. Sometimes it's OK to start from the bottom to correct our shortcomings.
"The medal target is set based on discussion with the national sports associations, so if they failed to deliver, they are failures.
"However, there's no point just talking about failing, we need to find solutions and improve to bounce back."