SELAMAT HARI RAYA

To everybody on Earth,

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Maaf zahir dan batin.

Now, didn't I say Fabio Duarte!!

Ha! Ha! Ha! There you go. And you read it here first, not in cyclingnews.com, Reuters or AFP.. I told you so here. I told you Fabio Duarte would be the one to win the UCI Under-23 World Championships road race and it happened, just as the script had it, although he might have got a little scare from the little Italian and German.
Duarte is the first ever Colombian winner of the title. Our Anuar Manan held on for one and half laps, Fauzan Ahmad Lutfi for six. Out of three years of participations, Malaysia has only had one finisher in the Under-23 World Championships - a self-funded Ng Yong Li, riding alone in 2006, finishing 122nd out of 156 finishers.
But you've gotta start thinking, and thinking how far behind we are. Duarte is 22 and has been a pro since he was 19. The closest we went was Yong Li breaking into the European scene as a 19-year old in 2005 and turning pro at 21 last year.
Sure it is far too difficult for the faint hearted, but Malaysian losers have given up long before they even got started. So, it is up to the individuals, the private ventures, the real fighters to carry on and look at how we're going to make a breakthrough.
The breakthroughs that are happening on the local front, at least as far a the administrators and 'caretakers' of the sport are concerned, was a meeting to discuss and decide which coach is to handle the national road team, held this afternoon. That, after almost nine months of the national squad having noone in charge. Phew!!
I believe these meetings and more meetings, which follow and come after other meetings, are all they are up to. Well yes, they think they've got enough political ammo in the track sprints squad's thus far successful programme.
Come on. Wake up MNCF and NSC. The world is leaving us behind!!!

UPDATE!! Full results and brief report is up on cyclingnews.com

59/60... So, do we dream on, or do something about it?

Fauzan Ahmad Lutfi arrived in Varese on Saturday, only to find his aero-bar had gone missing. Well, it was a clip-on aero-bar, which was to a fixed onto his road bike for the individual time trial.

Not that he didn't have a time trial bike. He couldn't bring it as the duo for the Under-23 World Championships were travelling on a tight budget, as their trip had been funded out of Datuk Astaman Abdul Aziz's own pocket, not the NSC's taxpayers funds. So, they had to save money on excess baggage, leaving Fauzan with the only option of bringing just enough to make do.

Questions had been asked by silly people with silly minds about the validity of sending a squad to the World Championships when we have little chance of producing results. Now, those people should feel somewhat appeased by the fact that their predictions have come true. Fauzan finished 59th out of 60 finishers in the 33.5km individual time trial on Tuesday.

I think many people had been interested in the World Championships and were watching it live on Eurosport, judging from about 45 sms messages I got, mostly telling me: "Mana Fauzan? Batang hidung pun tak nampak." (Where is Fauzan? Didn't even have a glimpse of him.)

Some others said, "Of course lah, this is the World Championships, not Selangor Menteri Besar Cup." Well, of course, it is the World Championships.

Now, the question is, do we celebrate the fact that as expected our rider failed, or do we look at this more seriously? We've had enough of riders claiming pride from winning local races, races contested only by us. Some breakthroughs have been made. Our road boys are beginning to make waves on the international scene in the UCI Asia Tour races. Look at Anuar Manan and the Le Tua team. They fear nothing and always aim higher.

Look at Ng Yong Li, Loh Sea Keong and Firdaus Daud. They were brave enough to grab destiny by its horns and make their own moves to establish careers abroad. They've succeeded with what little support they had, when some people back home were eager to state that these riders had little hope of succeeding and weren't good enough to cut it.

We Malaysians always put down each other. And many of us often get sucked down that same road. Of course it is difficult. Ask Yong Li what pains he had to go through in his formative years in Spain and Portugal, then France. Ask Sea Keong how much his parents had to suffer to get him through and on the road to chasing down his dream, same goes for Firdaus.

It is a mammoth task, so fearsome that many are even afraid to get started. If that is the case, then why even bother having road cycling programmes in the country. Just focus on the five or six track riders at the Melbourne base.

But this is not the end. People are starting to realise that programmes under and run solely by the NSC and MNCF are usually doomed for failure, unless you have an angle like John Beasley falling out of the sky and onto your laps to save the track sprints programme. All the NSC have to do then, is fund it.

For me, as I've told MNCF deputy president Datuk Naim Mohamad in a pow-wow between him and the "Terrible Two" of Malaysian cycling, Berita Harian's Zairee Zahir and myself, over supper on Saturday night, we should look at options.

The national team at World Championships for road or track, should be made up of the best riders who qualified through rankings, not a 100% monopoly by the NSC programme, because history has it that this is too risky for the safety of the future of Malaysian cycling.

The doors should be open for private programmes to be recognised. Trade teams can be registered both for road and track events, and points gathered for nations rankings towards qualification for the big two meets. If a privately run programme can field another 12 riders at World Cup events to complement the national team's entries, why not? At the end of the day, points and returns are for the country.

I guess private companies would also be more interested if they see an opportunity to fund riders all the way to World Championships. That's wishful thinking for the moment, but I do think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, for the road squad, I think since there are three establishments capable of racing on the international stage - Le Tua, MCF and the national team - there should be a programme established from now on.

What better target annually than the World Championships? Of course, Le Tour de Langkawi is there, so is Jelajah Malaysia. But those are in the early part of the season, while World Championships are usually in September or October. If the track squad can be set World Championships targets, why not the road squad. We've already qualified for three successive Under-23 World Championships, and we can use the UCI Asia Tour tickets to qualify for the elite category Worlds. That is a start, before we look at winning. But why do we fear even starting? Because we have weak people deciding our fate.

Come on, look at the startlist for the Elite Road World Championships road race. Japan have qualified Yukiya Arashiro, Kazuo Inoue and Hidenori Nodera.. On Yong Li's day, on any given mountain, Arashiro wouldn't even be fit to share his powerbar! Well, okay, this past season Yong Li was busy being Arashiro's Meitan-Hompo team domestique in France. So he didn't have time to look at qualifying for the World Championships. Isn't it MNCF's job to look into how he can qualify and lead him to it?

What about the over 200 other road riders in the country? Do they have a future? Can they have dreams of even rubbing shoulders with those at the top someday? Not at the moment. Because according to most in MNCF and NSC, they are never ready, they are never prepared and they are never good enough. Not even if they've earned the right through qualification!!

It always "takes time", "you can't expect instant results"... etc... Well, I started covering cycling almost nine years ago. I'm still waiting for them to overcome the long wait.

Now, now, please take note. Seriously.

None of you may care, but what the heck... I have a few hobbies really close to my heart: I'm a bit of an audiophile, sports freak (read a lot, watch a lot, play sometimes), a bit of a dreamer, a reader (stuff other than sport) and when its that time of the year, I can get so crazy about fishing. Get so crazy sometimes, that I just want to be left alone to catch all those monsters. Friends have called me nuts; mummy and daddy always wondered why I spent so much time doing it, yet usually came back with little or nothing for dinner.
It is my getaway without going on expensive holidays; it is my short drive away to peace from this seriously screwed up world; it is my moment with destiny, when my dreams are fulfilled by God and his most fascinating, unpredictable, yet inspiring creations - fish.

Now, this piece that appeared in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul in the US, sure can give fellow anglers and myself loads of inspiration. Maybe we've been doing something right all along.

But of course, I have no dreams of becoming President of the US (or Prime Minister of Malaysia)!!!

Datuk Mat Said punya pantun raya!!

Datuk Ahmad Said, the Terengganu Menteri Besar, has taken time off his busy schedule to amuse us with his self-penned pantuns or poems for Hari Raya, one for every State in the country. Somehow, he left out Sabah and Sarawak.
Check it out on this blog. I particularly like the one for Malacca!!