Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 29 August 2016 issue)

Dear Kam,
Did you watch the badminton finals in Rio? Wasn’t it amazing how it brought Malaysians together?
Love, A Malaysian

Imagine, four silver medals and a bronze. Rio has been Malaysia’s greatest Olympics. Australia won 29 medals, but for them, that was a disaster, whereas Malaysia’s five medals feel like an amazing triumph. Along the way, the badminton mixed doubles pair performed far beyond expectations, the men’s doubles pair had two match points in the final game and Datuk Lee Chong Wei won an epic semi-final against his friend and archrival Lin Dan.

I hardly watched any of it because I was too afraid. What I did watch was through my fingers and mostly, I let the roar of the neighbourhood tell me when points had been won. Every roar reduced me to a blubbering mess. I don’t know how the players managed to keep their nerve and I don’t know how Malaysians managed to watch. I was a scaredy-cat and I salute everyone.

Much has been made of how badminton brought Malaysians together. For one brief moment (well, three), all Malaysians watched, celebrated and commiserated together. I may have been cowering in a corner but after the matches, I really enjoyed watching videos of Malaysians at home or in coffee shops jumping up and down with joy when Chong Wei won his semi-final. This moment has been spoken of as if it is a rarity, but for me, it was an expression of everyday Malaysia.

Badminton gave us an excuse to cheer for the reality of Malaysia and show that the divisiveness is manufactured and it has failed to catch on. You may say I am dreaming, but badminton showed that I am not the only one.

Dear Kam,
Why is it that every time I watch the news or read Facebook, I start to panic?
Nail-biter

For some strange reason, I woke up really early, so I watched the TV news. It was Sky News, which is the British branch of Rupert Murdoch’s TV news empire. He also owns several British newspapers.

It was very early in the morning, but I was almost immediately gripped by fear. At first, everything was happy because they were showing the return to Britain of their victorious Olympics team, which came second in the medal score. The team of ordinary gals and chaps even sang an impromptu God Save the Queen on their flight.

When I lived in Britain, they would win a handful of medals, but now, they have come second, winning more golds than China. It was an incredible turnaround and the British TV audience must have been filled with happiness and pride.

But then, the Sky News presenter suddenly turned very serious when she started talking about events on the Turkish-Syrian border. It was a very abrupt change of topic and I could tell this was serious and menacing news because she spoke in minor keys.

British news reporters are trained to change the pitch of their voice musically from major to minor keys to enhance the seriousness or pathos of the story, which I find to be tediously manipulative.

The report told me that Turkey had taken its military stance to a “new level”. The report was full of phrases such as “rising tensions” and “further escalation”, and the images were of explosions and men with beards who were shouting and brandishing AK47s.

The contrast could not have been more horribly stark for the British TV viewer. Ten seconds earlier, victorious British Olympians were returning home and singing the national anthem and now, the outside world was going to hell again.

After being constantly bombarded with stark juxtapositions like this, it is hardly surprising that the British have become a timid and insular people.

But I had seen a report about the Turkish-Syrian border on Al Jazeera the night before and they reported things very differently. For a start, Al Jazeera has a reporter based permanently on the border, so unlike Sky News, they were not concocting a story in faraway London based solely on second-hand footage.

The Al Jazeera reporter did not play emotionally manipulative musical tricks with his voice but instead told us that although Turkey was indeed ramping up its military presence, it was also a bit same old, same old. Something to be concerned about, but not the end of the world.

Scrolling through Facebook is like watching Sky News, where stories of happiness (cute kittens) are immediately followed by stories of horror (beheadings). The jarring juxtapositions create a sense of panic and a fear that the safety of home will be invaded perhaps by a criminal (probably a foreigner) or even an invisible flesh-eating virus that lives in nasi lemak. Somebody wants us to be afraid because fear sells.

Dear Kam,
Is it my imagination or did Britain win a lot of medals at the Olympics? I thought they were hopeless at sports. You know, try hard and plucky but lose anyway.
Joe

I am stunned and impressed by how Britain managed to win 67 medals in Rio, including 27 gold. In 1988, they won five gold medals. How did they turn it around and are there any lessons for Malaysia? Most successful has been British cycling led by Dave Brailsford. The initial emphasis was on track cycling but it has since expanded to road cycling events such as the Tour de France, where British cyclists are now the dominant force.

One of the cornerstones of Brailsford’s philosophy is “marginal gains” where attention is given to even the tiniest details of a cyclist’s preparation, from the best way to wash your hands to avoid infections to painting the bicycles with the same wind-resistant paint used for Formula One cars.

Where once British athletes had a reputation for being psychologically weak when under pressure, their cyclists are now supremely confident because they know that their preparation is second to none.

Traditional European trainers laughed at the temerity of the British to even attempt to compete, but now, they are slavishly copying.

Cycling has a well-deserved reputation for doping and there are doubters, but I happen to think that Brailsford’s cyclists are riding clean.

Dopers like Lance Armstrong could have sudden and sustained acceleration up steep hills while the British cyclists maintained a steady, even boring, pace. The excessive amount of time and mental effort that Armstrong expended in chasing after the dope (secretive midnight injections in Alpine car parks) is now being used to train professionally and completely. If Malaysia wants to learn from anybody, looking at British cycling would be a good place to start.

Reprinted with the kind permission of