March 16 was supposed to be a red letter day for cycling in the state but turned out to be the blackest in the sport’s history.
The five-day Tour of Sarawak covering a distance 787.6 km from Miri to Sematan was supposed to start that day but by then it had degenerated into a total fiasco after it was cancelled three days earlier.
The tour would have been the first ever Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) multiday road race organised in the state. The cycling road race has now been replaced by the blame game and breast beating.
The main culprit is obviously the main organiser Faidz Industries Sdn Bhd whose only defence was to deflect the blame or at least part of it to other organisations, sponsors and even government ministries.
It is unfathomable that the organisers could leave it till three days before the race before cancelling it. Surely the writing must have been on the wall long before that eleventh hour especially when the race was supposed to cost RM3.5 million to hold and well before the event there were already signs like pullouts from sponsors saying they would not be able to raise that amount.
However, Faidz Industries should not be the only party to bear the blame.
The state’s Ministry of Social Development must also take some of the brickbats despite strenuous efforts to disassociate the ministry from the organiser.
The ministry cannot totally wash its hands off the event now that it has turned into a global shame as it was reported on Aug 15 2015 the Tour of Sarawak would be collaboration between the Faidz Industries and the Ministry of Social Development and Ministry of Tourism.
The Tour of Sarawak was obviously not a purely ‘private initiative’ that had nothing to do with the ministry or other government agencies.
Interestingly a spokesman for the Ministry of Social Development said in the statement distancing government ministries and agencies from the organiser that their only role was to coordinate the race.
If that was the case then the ministry had failed miserably because when the teams arrived in Miri there was totally no coordination and three days before the race was to start the police, local authorities and other relevant departments were totally unprepared. If there had been even a smidgen of coordination by the Ministry of Social Development surely the red flags would have been raised well before the teams arrived in Miri.
However, rather than turning the aftermath of this disaster into a witch hunt it is better to draw some valuable lessons from the whole affair.
Government agencies and ministries must never let their names be used by organizers of international events without scrutinising their background thoroughly.
More importantly there must be constant monitoring of the buildup to the event by the ministry to ensure things were going according to plan.
On the brighter side not all the teams left without a word of encouragement.
The best perhaps came from the team from Philippines 7-11 whose manager Ric Rodriguez said Sarawak is a beautiful state and if there were to be a future cycling event organised in the state they would still support it.
Ric’s statement carries a very important message to Sarawak – the state government should take up the challenge to hold the Tour of Sarawak, making sure it would be properly run, in the near future to redeem our pride.