Our Olympic Dream

Beijing 2008 Olympic opening ceremony is getting closer and this has been the much awaited games for long period of time, and there rest our hope of ending our dream of first ever Olympic gold medal! This year Malaysia should has the strongest chance of securing our first ever gold medal, and government is splashing out RM 1 mil for those who successfully wins the gold medal in Olympic games.

Therefore of the many athletes in the Malaysia contigents, who's our best bet for the coveted gold medal? I certainly think majority of the Malaysian would said it's again our Badminton team that is our strongest possibility to achieve that feat! Quite rightly so because currently Badminton team consist of a world top players, like Lee Chong Wei, who's ranked No 2 in the world, consistant veterans Lee Wan Wah-Choong Tan Fook who's wins quite numbers of titles for the past few years, and the almost forgotten Koo Kian Keat-Tan Boon Heong, who once is the most fearsome pair in men's double games.

Of the three mentioned, Lee Chong Wei is our best of the best hope because he's been performing consistently throughout the Olympic qualifying, tournaments and everything he participated in. He'd also defeated all the world top class players consistently for the last one year or so, and if he keeps up his performance level, we would at least can safely say there's a Silver medal in the bag, with the hope of a gold.

Lee Wan Wah-Choong Tan Fook may be 'old' among the competitors, but with their vast experience I still think they will have at least some chances of creating upsets in the tournament, and providing the consistency and recovering time given, it may work to their advantage. I think most young players would under perform during Olympic games first because it's once every 4 years, and you may not get the second chance, and secondly all participants in Olympic are of the top players/pairs because they went through a punishing 2 years plus qualifying period, where only consistent performers qualified.

As for Koo Kien Kiat-Tan Boon Heong, they were once on top of the world, when they were unknown to all others, and they were at rock bottom where everyone beaten them easily without sweat before. Now they are gaining confident within themselves as well as each other, I believe without the attention focused on them, they would perform better in this condition. So I would not discard the possibility of them sprinking a surprise for Malaysia! They'd done it before, and I do believe they can do it again!

Not only Badminton, we also have other sports, which I think may give us a surprise or two! Like Cycling, (sorry tempororily forgotten your name) he's an underdog for the games, and he may wins a medal or two for our country, and maybe one of them would be that much awaited Gold medal! Diving, we have a young upcoming prospect participating too. No doubt it's never our strong performance in diving, but he proved in the last Asiad Games, he could performed to the very highest level as well. Maybe qualifying for the finals would do him good with his confident level and I also believe he would perform to the highest standard of himself when competing with top divers from China, America, Europe etc.

So let's pray the Beijing 08 Olympic would be an unforgotten memory for all Malaysian with their best ever outings, performances, medal tally, all and all!