State’s ISN centres to be upgraded next year

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KUCHING: The two National Sports Institute of Malaysia’s (ISN) satellite centres in the state will be upgraded and better equipped next year.

Ramesh Chandar-Nair Kunjuni

Presently the centres, which are located here and in Miri, are also understaffed.

But this will be a thing of the past come January 1, 2015, said ISN deputy chief executive officer Ramesh Chandar-Nair Kunjuni.

He was in Kuching recently to visit the two satellite centres and also brief Assistant Sports Minister Datuk Lee Kim Shin on ISN’s expansion plans through the Blue Ocean strategy.

“The Kuching was set up in 2007 while the Miri centre was set up in April 2012. Presently we have seven staff in Kuching and five in Miri. The two centres in Sarawak are among the 16 centres we have nationwide,” he said.

According to him, ISN is now recruiting more people and it needs 15 to 20 staff in each centre for it to be fully operative.

The satellite centres in the state are supporting 23 sports and the demand has also increased by many folds in recent years.

“After upgrading the Kuching and Miri satellite centres we are looking to set up another centre in Sibu,” added Ramesh.

He said ISN played an important role in helping the athletes to improve their performance through sports science.

Ramesh said the application of sports science had produced results in countries like United Kingdom which won seven out of ten gold medals in cycling at the last Olympics “because they used aerodynamic technology”.

“Due to sports science, we put Datuk Lee Chong Wei back on the badminton courts in 65 days after he had an injury and he helped us win an Olympic silver medal in the men’s singles,” he said.

Ramesh said there was also the vital need for Malaysia to inject more money into Research and Development (R & D) if it wants to do better at the Olympics or other international competitions.

“The United State spent US$405.3 billion in R & D in 2011 and they have won 976 gold medals in all the Olympics while United Kingdom spent US$38.4 billion and they captured 27 gold medals.

“Japan spent US$160 billion and won 21 Olympic golds, while Singapore spent US$6.3 billion in 2011 and we only spent US$2.6 billion,” he disclosed.

Ramesh said Malaysia is doing well in sports like badminton, squash, bowling, lawn bowls and artistic gymnastics at international competitions.

“Sarawak has lots of talents in archery, cycling, wushu, swimming and diving, and athletics and ISN satellite centres play a big role in doing the talent identification for these sports,” said Ramesh.

He said when the Kuching and Miri satellite centres go full swing in January next year, they will help set up multilateral centres in chosen schools to do talent identification at grass-roots level.