MAY 28 — And so he’s done it again. Ridhuan Tee has somehow managed to turn a night of almost-sporting-jubilance for Malaysians into a race-fueled field day for himself.

I shall not be dwelling in Ridhuan’s pursuits, for I have never seen race as an inherent barrier to sporting excellence in most cases (and I say “inherent”, because it does become a factor when human beings begin deciding that it is). But I shall be speaking purely from the point of view of a sportsman, a blessing and privilege that I was fortunate enough to be able to experience first hand.

I’ve spent quite a number of years involved in sports, Taekwondo in my case. 21 years to be exact; three of which were done leisurely, eight in my club’s Elite Team (competitive), four in the national team (super ultra competitive), and 10 as a coach (ultimate patience tester). And yes, I know the years do not add up to 21. But they overlapped, so you get the picture.

Over the years, I’ve been able to experience sports from different angles. As an eight-year-old, I spent my training hours trying to re-enact the abilities of Power Rangers on my training comrades (who, by the way, I am sure were trying to emulate idols of their own too because sometimes, I swear I saw entirely new moves and manoeuvres that were completely different from those already taught by our instructor). As I grew into a teenager, I started to realize that my body wasn’t going to morph, and the kicks got serious. When I finally got enlisted into the national team, I was flying overseas to kick ass. Classy. And throughout these years, race was never an issue – we kicked anyone who stood in front of us in the ring.

Okay… so that didn’t exactly sound right. The real point is, it didn’t matter with whom I was training, and against whom I was competing. I had fun. We all had fun. We were friends in class, adversaries in the ring, and friends again – in fact, better friends – upon exiting the ring. Malays, Chinese, Indians – or even Koreans, French, Taiwanese, and Iranians, for that matter. You name it. Race simply did not matter.

One of my fondest memories took place during my debut in the Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam, or SEA Games as most people would call it. I remember reading an article that ranked me at no. 11. Not bad, if there were actually more than 11 countries in South East Asia. God had a wicked sense of humour, making me read that article a few days prior to my match.

Eddie Lim says that he would cheer for our badminton team no matter what. — Reuters pic

Anyway, so I was in the final round (yes I made it to the final!), gold medal match against the home favourite. All I could remember were deafening cheers and thunderous roars in the stadium every time my Vietnamese opponent touched me. It was almost impossible to hear anything coming from the Malaysian camp of probably less than 20 people. We had another group of probably 20 Vietnamese who were brought in by the hosts to lend support to us (Yeah, we actually had a group of Vietnamese who were trying their best to correctly pronounce “Malaysia” in their loudest volume. How cool was that?). I won the gold medal eventually, and when I was watching back the fight on the video recorded by my teammate, I heard the most amazing comments from my teammates that wouldn’t have been possibly audible if it wasn’t for the video. One of them was cursing when points weren’t registered for me, sometimes in swearwords that I didn’t even know existed in the Chinese dictionary. He was Indian. And man, was he good at it. The first person who congratulated me subsequent to the match, apart from my teammates, was Malay. And my teammates who threw me up in the air in celebration were Malays, Chinese, and Indians.

These are the exact people who I will forever treasure in my life. These are people who have gone through more extreme physical training than what most people will ever be subjected to in their lifetime. They are the ones who showed me that the reason we trained hard was for the glory of our nation, family, friends, and ultimately, ourselves. Race, was never in that sentence. I would’ve had no doubt that it would’ve been my name they would be shouting no matter what country or race I faced.

And so, just to answer your question, professor, yes I would whole-heartedly support Misbun if he were to go head-to-head with Lin Dan. Why? Because I think Malaysians are just cool like that. Either that, or because I think he hensem.

P/S: Heading to Perlis for SUKMA this weekend. I sure hope my Indian, Chinese and Malay students win their matches.

*This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of the Malay Mail Online.