PLEASE don’t get too excited over Malaysia’s success (68 gold medals) at the recent Sea Games in Thailand.

We must remember that the Sea Games are certainly not on par with the Asian Games or the Olympics.

Rewarding our athletes for the gold medals they won would of course be good motivation in future sports tournaments. But we should not spoil them and I think that giving each gold medal winner RM5,000 for individual gold is overdoing it.

Some of the athletes may get big-headed and this will be detrimental to their performances later on.

There are examples of such occurrences. Our badminton team that won the Thomas Cup in 1992 was rewarded handsomely with land, money, etc. Hafiz Hashim who won the All-England tournament in 2003 was also generously rewarded. Look what happened to them. They have not won the Thomas Cup since then and Hafiz Hashim is not performing well.

For the SEA Games winners, a token sum of RM1,000 for a gold medal, RM500 silver and RM300 for bronze should be enough.

If these athletes go on to succeed in the Olympics and the Asian Games, they can then be rewarded handsomely.

ZULKIFLY HAIRI OSMAN, Ipoh

Source: NST – December 24, 2007