Yes, Malaysia Boleh!! We won a silver medal in Beijing Olympic all thanks to our local hero Lee Chong Wei. Eh.. sorry... it will be Datuk Lee Chong Wei very soon...
Not to undermine Lee's commitment and his contribution to the sports, but I think the recent fanfare is just plain too much. Read it
here!!
Yes, I would agree that it is a great achievement, but look at the rewards that came pouring in. Datuk Lee has been given a reward money of RM300,000 and a pension award of RM3,000 per month for the rest of his life!!! On top of that, he will be conferred the Datukship by the Penang government. All for an Olympic SILVER MEDAL ONLY.
Too bad squash is still being left out of Olympic, otherwise Datul Nicol David would have been RM500k richer!! I personally think that Nicol's achievements in her sports outshine Lee's achievements. However the rewards that they have both received are so different! Nicol has only been given RM200,000 minus the lifetime pension fund for her win at the World Squash Open whilst mantaining her world number one ranking for months now! Read more about Nicol's
here.
Also, Michael Phelps wished that he should have been a Malaysian. I seriously don't think Americans government will be so generous to him. In Malaysia he could easily become Datuk Michael Phelps, at least RM2 millions of reward and will be enjoying pension fund for the rest of his life some more! Afterall, he is now the greatest olympian with 8 records setting wins at the Beijing Olympic!! 8 gold medals x RM300k = RM2.4 millions minimum! World records some more so he will get couple of hundred thousands thrown in as extra.
Talk about sports "NEP" in Malaysia!