NAYPYITAW, Dec 22 — The Malaysian contingent’s performance at the 27^th Myanmar SEA Games which came to a close today was nothing more than average after mustering 43 gold, 38 silver and 77 bronze and finishing fifth overall.

The 40-gold target set for the games was in itself a mediocre target and having surpassed that warrants nothing more than a tongue-lashing for those who had set such a low standard.

Considering that the SEA Games is the lowest ranked multi-sport event in the region, the 43 gold medals won does not auger well for the future of Malaysian sports, especially when Malaysia has managed to win only nine gold medals more than Singapore while the likes of Myanmar and Vietnam have won 86 and 73 gold medals respectively.

Malaysia ruled supreme in only three of the 29 sports contested: diving, hockey and karate. 

The divers swept all eight gold medals at stake, while the men’s and women’s hockey teams captured both the gold medals at stake and karate went on to capture seven of the 17 gold medals offered.

The overall fifth placing fell one place short of the fourth placing at the 2011 SEA Games in Indonesia.

More disappointing was losing the ‘Mother of all gold Medals’ in the games when Malaysia, as the defending champion in football, ended in fourth place.

However, National Sports Council (NSC) director-general Datuk Seri Zolkples Embong was generous in his assessment, claiming he was happy with the overall performance of the Malaysian contingent since he deemed it a difficult task to achieve the target set.

Zolkples’ contention was that a number of sports that Malaysia were favoured to win gold medals, were not included in the programme, especially tenpin bowling, track cycling and squash.

“For the past two or three months we were in doubt of achieving the target because we did not compete in a number of events and sports while some [athletes] were injured.

“Therefore we took a risk by setting the 40-gold target. But it is normal in major games. We managed to achieve the target only on the final day of competition,” he told Malaysian reporters today.

Zolkples said the performance of the Malaysian contingent could be divided into three categories — excellent, satisfactory and poor.

He said 13 sports were listed under the excellent achievement category, including aquatics, (swimming & diving), badminton, billiard & snooker, body building, equestrian, hockey, karate, archery, shooting, muay thai, sailing and wushu.

Sports that were listed under moderate are weightlifting, golf, athletics, pencak silat, taekwondo and boxing while cycling, football and sepak takraw were listed under the poor performance list.

Zolkples said 14 sports that contributed gold medals were regulations sports held in the SEA Games, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games and Olympics,” he said.

Thailand emerged overall champion with 107 gold, 94 silver, 81 bronze, followed by host country Myanmar with 85 gold, 62 silver, 85 bronze and Vietnam finished third with 73 gold, 86 silver, 86 bronze while Indonesia took fourth place after hauling in 65 gold, 84 silver and 110 bronze medals. — Bernama