They had a magical knack of stimulating fans with their scintillating performances, and their presence on Saturday at “A Celebration of Perak’s Track and Field Legends” made it a seminal moment.
All their gifts came together in breathless abundance and old friendships were excavated at the convivial gala.
It was organised by the Perak athletics family to recognise and lift the spirits of the 16 living heroes and the families of nine who had passed on.
Most of them are largely unknown to the younger generation of Malaysians.
Countless stories flowed about devoted athletes, coaches and officials, and sporting and academic excellence as the glorious past and capricious present raised mixed emotions.
While they appeared content with the way their lives have panned out, some of their recollections were hilarious and rose-tinted while others had sharp edges.
Most of the guests were state and national athletes themselves, who came together to resample their youth and slyly gauge the impact of time on one another.
Joining them in the good-natured, knockabout fun on a peerless evening at the Royal Ipoh Club was youth and sports minister Ahmad Faizal Azumu whose vibrancy was worthy of a gold medal.
Faizal is a true spark plug. By doing the unexpected, he rocked the house. By relating offbeat stories, he raised a chuckle, in some cases, lifting the heart as well.
He spontaneously surprised the audience by getting into a video call with US-based 400m Ipoh-born athlete, Shereen Vallabouy, and her coach, Mason Rebarchek, to wish them the best at the world athletics championships.
Faizal rallied the attendees to give Shereen and Rebarchek a big applause ahead of her race in Oregon on July 17 before leading some 300 people to sing ‘happy birthday’, like a chorus line, to Shereen, who was turning 24 the next day.
Earlier, Faizal received rousing cheers and a standing ovation as he revelled on the stage with a framed souvenir bearing the signatures of the athletics greats who attended the event and that of family members of those who had died.
In his speech, he said he wanted the event to be an annual affair involving all sports and hoped other states would do the same.
“The achievements of sports people are significant and their contributions and talent should be acknowledged deservedly.
“We are a country built on the bonds of family and community and a shared society is one that focuses on responsibilities we have to one another,” he said.
The celebration of athletes, coaches and administrators from the glorious era of Malaysian athletics was joyful, emotional and history-making.
Olympian Karu Selvaratnam (400m and 400m hurdles, Tokyo and Mexico Olympics), who received a Perak Legend trophy, said: “This was a celebration of human relationship, one which pointedly showed we were made for each other.”
“The event captured the intensity of friendships formed and individual and team achievements in our early sporting years,” said Karu, a retired naval officer.
“It also displayed a high sense of caring by those who initiated the event, and the presence of the youth and sports minister reinforced the need to jealously guard such memories.”
Leading the list of the delightful club of greats were 1960s track phenoms, M Jegathesan and M Rajamani, who are both Olympians and Malaysia’s first sportsman and sportswoman of the year in 1967.
Two other Olympians – Nashatar Singh Sidhu (javelin, Tokyo and Mexico Olympics) and Junaidah Aman (400m, 1972 Munich Olympics) – were unable to attend the gathering while S Sivaraman, a reserve in the 4×400 relay at Munich, made a rare appearance.
Malaysia’s oldest coaches, K Jayabalan and Tan Choo Mong, were in the spotlight, too, for their special blend of passion and persistence.
Two other Perak-born coaches, Papu Ignatius and C Ramanathan, who developed star athletes in Penang, were terribly missed by many.
The others who received the Perak Legend trophy were discus-throwing giant M Dattaya, Perak athletics chief Karim Ibrahim, 93-year-old sprinter and a former top official L Pushpanathan, and Ng Kar Liew, the 1961 Seap Games (now SEA Games) javelin gold medallist, who is now a fruit seller.
Those honoured posthumously were Asir Victor (400m) and Shamsuddin Jaafar (400m), both Olympians who also served as national athletics coach for the Asian Games in 1970, 1974 and in 1978.
The others were hammer champions Genda Singh and his son Semret, ex-national barefoot distance runner A Kandiah, sprinter V Vijiaretnam and coaches Sangaran Kutty Nayar, R Suppiah and Aloysius Ong Yoon Pheng.
You can tell a great deal about Perak from the quality of its sportsmen. Football genius M Karathu and hockey marvel R Yogeswaran, who were both speed aces, were also recognised for their lifelong contributions to their respective sports.
Shereen’s father, Samson, and her mother, Josephine Mary, who themselves were elite athletes, were given surprise awards for making the country proud internationally.
The gala was hosted by Young Talent Track & Field (YTTF), a grassroots organisation dedicated to training children below the age of 12 and young disabled people, and was supported by the Perak Athletics Association, Paralympic Council of Malaysia and Malaysia Olympians Association.
YTTF CEO Danny Sritharan and the secretary-general of Paralympic Council of Malaysia, Subramaniam Raman Nair, inked their collaboration with a memorandum of understanding to jointly-develop para athletes.
At the end of the legends gala, Sritharan said: “When we began organising the event, we said it may never happen again but now we all agree that it will never happen again.”