Update 27th November 2010
The Games has ended. Malaysia wrapped up with 9-18-14 (total: 41), our best ever haul, surpassing 2006′s 8-17-17 (total: 42).
Finishing 10th in the medal standings, we’re second best in South East Asia after Thailand, who got 11-9-32, which is not even their best ever harvest. Of course the Thais love the Asian Games so much – they’ve hosted it 4 times, the last time in 1998 when they collected a whopping 24 golds. Malaysia has never even hosted the Asiad.
In the all-time list, Malaysia is 13th with 51 golds. For SEA, Thailand is tops with 109 golds (7th place). Even the Philippines and Indonesia have more total golds than us. Of course the team to beat is China, with an incredible 1,190 golds in all, even though when it comes to total medals, it still lost out to Japan (2,552 to 2,658).
In the 2010 Asiad, China missed breaking the 200-gold barrier by a single gold, dwarfing second-placed Korea who got 76. China’s previous best was 165 golds.
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Update 25th November 2010
Malaysia won its 9th gold through the women’s squash team which defeated Hong Kong 2-0 in the final:
- Low Wee Wern defeated Rebecca Chiu 11-4, 7-11, 11-6, 11-9.
- Nicol David defeated Annie Au 11-8, 11-7, 11-6.
With that, Malaysia has achieved its 9-gold target, the nation’s best ever performance at an Asian Games.
The 10th gold slipped away when we lost 0-2 to Pakistan in the men’s squash team. Ong Beng Hee was apparently down with a fever when he lost tamely 0-3; but Azlan Iskandar was a huge disappointment when he made many errors with his low shots to lose 12-14, 13-15, 4-11 to the opponent he defeated 3-0 in the individual final.
A few hours later, the men’s hockey team faced, who else but Pakistan again in the final and what do you know, also lost 0-2.
So we lost 2 gold medals to the same team within about 2 hours with exact same scorelines of 0-2.
Still congrats to Pakistan: apparently they won the men’s squash team gold for the first time in 12 years, and the men’s hockey gold for a little longer: 20.
And where’s S Premila? Did she even participate?
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Update 24th November 2010
R Puvaneswarn, 35 wins Malaysia’s 8th gold in the men’s 55 kg kumite (karate). He defeated Emad Mohammed Almalki, 21 of Saudi Arabia in the final. At the 2006 Asiad, Puvaneswaran got silver, having lost to Taiwan’s Hsieh Cheng-kang 2-3 in the final. This time, Puvaneswaran exacted revenge, defeating Hsieh in the quarterfinal. Puvaneswaran also won the event at the 2002 Asiad, defeating Otabek Kasimov 4-2 in the final. Puvaneswaran made his Asiad debut in 1994, winning a bronze. In 1998 he was disqualified in the second round for “accidentally punching an opponent’s throat.” His best performance at the World Karate Championships was 4th place in 2000, missing the bronze by one point.
Ku Jin Keat, 35 wins Malaysia’s 7th gold in the men’s individual kata (karate). He defeated Japan’s Itaru Oki, 24, the bronze medallist at the Karate World Championships last month with a score of 3-2. At the 2006 Asian games, Jin Keat won silver, losing 0-5 to Japan’s Tetsuya Furukawa in the final. At the 2002 Asian games, Jin Keat won bronze, having lost 1-2 to eventual gold medallist Yukimitsu Hasegawa of Japan.
More gold hopes:
Women’s squash: Malaysia through to final after defeating India 2-0.
Men’s Hockey: Malaysia through to final after stunning former world champs India 4-3.
Malaysia’s target is 9 golds, which is one better than the best ever performance: 8 golds in 2006.
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Update 22nd November 2010
Alex Liew Kien Liang bags Malaysia’s 6th gold in men’s bowling (all events). It’s his second gold, after the men’s doubles 5 days earlier.
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Update 21st November 2010
As expected, golds no. 4 and 5 both came from squash, Nicol David (world no. 1 & reigning world champion) and Azlan Iskandar (world no. 15).
On the same day, both our badminton world number ones, Koo Kien Keat / Tan Boon Heong & Lee Chong Wei lost their finals to the reigning Olympic champions in Markis Kido / Hendra Setiawan & Lin Dan.
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Update 17th November 2010
As at the time of writing, China is at 97 golds (!), and Malaysia added 2 more golds:
Azizulhasni Awang, 22, men’s keirin, and another Malaysian, Josiah Ng made it a 1-2 finish. That made up for Azizulhasni’s disappointment in the sprints, where he finished 4th. With that, a very long wait is over: 40-year wait for a gold medal in cycling at the Asiad. The last time was in 1970 through Ng Joo Ngan (individual road race) and Daud Ibrahim (1,600m massed start). Indeed, Azizulhasni is a world class cyclist: he placed 2nd in the keirin at the 2010 World Championships, losing only to Sir Chris Hoy, a multiple world and Olympic champion. He also placed 2nd in the sprint at the 2009 World Championships, losing only to Grégory Baugé, a multiple world champion. In the 2008 Olympics, he was the highest placed Asian cyclist in the keirin, finishing 8th.
Bowling, men’s doubles: Adrian Ang, 22 and Alex Liew, 34. It’s indeed sweet for Alex, who finally got his first Asiad gold after having represented Malaysia for 12 years, starting from the 1998 Asiad. It is Malaysia’s first Asiad gold in the men’s doubles since 1978.
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Update 15th November 2010
Our 1st gold: hosts China already at 50+ golds!
Chai Fong Ying, 24 bags Malaysia’s first gold at the Games, in the Women’s Taijiquan\Taijijian All-Round (wushu). This is expected, because she was world champion in 2005 and 2007, Asian Games champion in 2006 and Asian champion in 2008, even though she finished 4th at the last (2009) world championships. She defeated arch rivals in Japan’s Ai Miyaoka, the 2009 World Championships silver medalist and Taiwan / Chinese Taipei’s Wen Ching Ni, the 2009 World Championship bronze medalist. The 2009 world champion, L Lindswell of Indonesia only managed 6th place. Another Malaysian, Ng Shin Yii, finished 5th. Pity wushu is not an Olympic event.
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14 November 2010
Have two major sporting events ever been hosted on the same continent around the same time?
Commonwealth Games 2010 ended 14th October, Asian Games 2010 begins less than a month later. The XVI Asiad dwarfs the XIX CG though, with 42 sports, 10,000+ athletes from 45 regions & countries. In contrast, the CG only had 21 sports, 6,000+ athletes and 71 nations & dependencies.
Definitely China’s experience in hosting the 2008 Olympics helped, including managing the number of cars driven about to lessen pollution in one of the country’s biggest cities; perhaps car insurance policies would be cheaper there during the Games?
In comparison, India’s previous biggest sporting event was the 1982 Asian Games.
As for Malaysia, the Asiad could be harder than the CG. In India we got 12-10-14, our best ever haul. In the last i.e. 2006 Asian Games in Doha we got 8-17-17, also our best ever haul.
What is sure is that China will again dominate – in the last i.e. 2006 Asian Games in Doha it got an incredible 166 golds, leaving second placed South Korea more than 100 golds behind! This year the Chinese are hosts, I think them getting 200 golds is not impossible.
