Asum Can’t Depend On Veterans To Delivern The Golds Any More

PALEMBANG: If not for Kevin Yeap, Christina Loh and veterans Siow Yi Ting and Khoo Cai Lin, it could have been a disastrous campaign for Malaysia in swimming.

The Amateur Swimming Union of Malaysia (Asum) only projected a modest four-gold target fter top star Daniel Bego pulled out due to injuries.

But the team notched one extra gold at the end of the six-day competition for a haul of 5-9-3.

Christina, having already notched the fastest time in the region, was expected to win the 50m breaststroke gold medal while Kevin made amends by pacing himself well to take the men’s 400m freestyle title after failing to do so in the last two Games.

Yi Ting defended her 100m and 200m breaststroke titles as Malaysia swept all three golds at stake for the first time – with Cai Lin enjoying a well-deserved victory in the 800m freestyle.

But the question is how much longer can Malaysia depend on Yi Ting, Cai Lin and Daniel? Yi Ting has indicated that she will continue swimming until next year in a bid to earn a fourth appearance at the Olympics. She is unlikely to stick around for the next SEA Games in Myanmar in two years’ time.

The good thing is Christina has emerged as a capable successor to Yi Ting and is likely to reign in the shorter breaststroke disciplines. But unlike Yi Ting, she is not focusing on the 200m breaststroke and 200m individual medley – and that is a problem.

There is also a big question mark over whether Cai Lin and Daniel can still deliver the goods for Malaysia, if they are around for the next SEA Games, as they will have to contend with younger and hungrier rivals.

Even if Daniel had competed here, he may not have been able to deliver as many golds as he managed in Laos.

The Best Sportsman of the Laos Games with five golds, he could have suffered a beating at the hands of Joseph Schooling of Singapore and Hoang Quy Phuoc of Vietnam in the butterfly races.

There have been no swimmers going overseas for training since the days of Alex Lim Keng Liat, who was based in the United States. Perhaps that is why Malaysia do not have swimmers good enough to challenge those being produced by Singapore.

But to be fair, Singapore put in a lot of resources into swimming. They have several coaches just to take care of the SEA Games squad.

In fact, their swimming queen Tao Li, who romped to seven gold medals here, even has a personal coach whereas our national coach Paul Birmingham has to handle a squad of 17.

While happy with the overall performance of his team, Birmingham felt it could have been better.

“We won the events we were expected to but we also got many silvers. We had swimmers with upset stomachs and those like Ian James Barr and Yap See Tuan also had to deal with injuries,” he said.

“I was counting on Ian to achieve something special here but he tore his chest muscles and did not train for three weeks. It was the same with See Tuan, he had to wait too long and suffered from cramps before swimming the 200m breaststroke.”