KUALA LUMPUR: The decline of Malaysian diving clearly did not happen overnight but the question is, how long will it take to restore it to its former glory?
National divers endured a dismal outing at the Doha World Aquatic Championships last week, not a single diver was able to earn direct qualification to the Paris Olympics via the competition.
Malaysia will now have to wait for FINA to reallocate unused quota places in June to know if there are any slots available, though chances are slim at best.
If not, Bertrand Rhodict Lises, 19, will be Malaysia's sole representative in the sport in Paris which is the lowest since Malaysia made its Olympic debut in diving at Sydney 2000.
Rhodict earned qualification in the men's 10m platform individual at the Fukuoka World Championships last year.
By comparison Malaysia sent six divers to Rio 2016 and five to Tokyo 2020.
To be honest, the signs of decline were already there during the Tokyo Olympics which was held in 2021 due to Covid-19.
Not a single men's diver was able to qualify and Malaysia failed to win a medal in the sport for the first time since Beijing 2008.
Malaysia has depended on largely the same senior divers to deliver results over the past 10 years. Pandelela Rinong, who won medals at London 2012 and Rio 2016, as well as Wendy Ng and Ooi Tze Liang are all 31 this year while Nur Dhabitah Sabri is 25.
Fomer world champion and Olympic medallist Cheong Jun Hoong (34) and the venerable Datuk Leong Mun Yee (40) only retired in 2022 while Chew Yiwei (29) called time on his career last year.
All-conquering China on the other hand are usually represented by teenagers and rarely field divers past their mid-20s.
Dhabitah, who struggled with a tricep injury in Doha, is arguably the nation's best diver at the moment. She is capable and versatile, adept at both the springboard and platform disciplines.
Her versatility and the limited quality options in the team has seen her being spread thin across many events in recent seasons and subsequently it is unsurprising to see her battle various injuries.
The lack of new quality talent coming through the ranks in recent years indicates fundamental issues in the sport, especially at the grassroots level.
Malaysia Aquatics (MAS) as well as the National Sports Council (NSC) are well aware of these issues.
MAS underwent changes at the leadership level last year following abysmal results in swimming at the last two editions of the Sea Games.
MAS-NSC have since appointed former national divers Bryan Nickson Lomas and Khairul Safwan Mansur, as technical director and high performance director respectively in September.
Both are newly created positions intended to put the sport back on track.
In December, Bryan said he found that only seven or eight states had active diving programmes.
The duo have developed a new blueprint for 2024-2028 which, among others, aims to revive inactive states, boost the production of qualified local coaches and subsequently lower the ratio of coaches-to-athletes which is currently seen as a major stumbling block in the production of talent.
NSC believes it will take at least four years to see the results and produce a diver capable of challenging for medals at the global level.
How long it will actually take to win another Olympic medal is anybody's guess, however, there is no doubt that reviving the sport will require a well focused and persistent effort from the sporting authorities.
In the mean time, Malaysia will depend on the likes of Dhabitah and hope that the younger generation, including Rhodict, Jellson Jabillin, Enrique Harold Maccartney, Kimberly Bong, Ong Ker Ying and Nur Elisha Rania Muhammad Abrar Raj can make the step up.