When a country is serious about sporting excellence, its targets are clear, its ambitions transparent, and its failures instructive.
When a country is not, it blurs the scorecard.
Malaysia’s decision to ditch a gold medal target for the 2025 SEA Games, replacing it with a “colourless” overall medal count, tells us exactly which side of the divide we’re drifting towards.
The youth and sports minister calls the new method a psychological cushion for athletes, a way to reduce pressure so they can “focus on their best performance”.
The system, Hannah Yeoh insists, is backed by experts from Japan’s Nippon Sports Science University — a place synonymous with Olympic pedigree — and has been used in nations like Japan and South Korea.
On paper, it sounds modern. In practice, it reeks of something else entirely: institutionalised soft expectations.
Borrowing Japan’s method without the Japanese mindset
Malaysia copying Japan’s medal philosophy is like borrowing a samurai sword without having the discipline to hold it.
Japan can afford to de-emphasise gold because its baseline is elite.
The Japanese are a global sporting force with world-class football, baseball, gymnastics, swimming, and athletics.
Their university system generates Olympians as a norm. Their domestic competitions are pressure cookers. Their national psyche expects excellence.
Malaysia is not Japan.
We are still building reliable pipelines, still battling inconsistent sports governance, and still struggling with associations that treat standards as optional.
We cannot parachute into Japan’s system without first living the Japanese culture of brilliance.
Copying a champion’s method without copying their foundation only widens the gap between us.
Pressure isn’t the enemy, lack of standards is
Pressure doesn’t break athletes. Poor preparation does. Top sporting nations understand this.
The UK publishes Olympic medal targets tied to public funding. Australia issues clear medal-range targets and audits results.
China embraces ambitious targets and treats failure as reform fuel. Even the US, which sets no official target, measures itself against tough global expectations.
These countries don’t shy away from goals. They set them, and grow through them.
Malaysia, on the other hand, appears to fear its own reflection.
When we failed to meet the 2023 SEA Games mark of 40 golds, the response wasn’t to interrogate weaknesses or reform systems. It was to change the metric.
No gold target means never having to explain why gold was missed.
What an ‘overall medal target’ really means
Stripped of its press statements and technical jargon, the colourless target system does three things:
- It buries the elite metric: Bronzes and silvers inflate total medal numbers, creating the illusion of success while masking regression at the highest level.
- It weakens accountability: How do we evaluate return on public investment — millions every year — without a gold benchmark? How do we measure leadership performance?
- It lowers national ambition: Targets shape culture. A message like “any colour will do” does not mould champions. It produces athletes who aim for the podium, not the top.
Champions are not forged in environments where excellence is optional.
The psychology argument: Misapplied and misunderstood
The ministry insists that removing gold targets “reduces pressure”.
But pressure management is the job of sports psychologists, not national policy.
In Japan and South Korea, athlete pressure is managed through mental conditioning, not through official de-escalation.
Their sports ministries do not lower targets because athletes feel stress. They strengthen support systems so athletes can rise to them.
Malaysia’s approach confuses athlete psychology with national ambition.
It solves stress with softer goals, not stronger preparation.
That is not high-performance thinking. That is administrative comfort.
The wrong lesson from Hangzhou
Malaysia’s defenders point to the 2022 Asian Games, where we exceeded the overall medal target: 32 vs 27. Six gold, eight silver, eighteen bronze medals.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: We won fewer gold and silver medals compared with the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta.
The overall tally improved because of bronzes. Not excellence. Not breakthrough. Not world-beating performances.
Bronzes.
And now we are designing policy around this false glow.
Mistaking mediocrity for merit
For decades, Malaysian sport has nurtured a chronic fear of expectation.
We glorify runners-up. We reward “nearly”. We elevate silver as if gold were an unfair demand.
Badminton’s Lee Chong Wei was beloved not just for his brilliance, but for the national drama of falling just short.
Nicol David, one of the greatest squash players of all time, received enormous admiration.
But even her greatness was often absorbed into a broader culture that is more comfortable celebrating heroes than interrogating why they remain exceptions rather than the norm.
What does that tell us? Malaysia loves comfort stories, not uncomfortable excellence.
We elevate effort, not outcome. We lower bars instead of clearing them.
The overall medal target fits this cultural pattern perfectly.
Does this make us a true sporting nation?
A true sporting nation welcomes ambition, embraces pressure and sets tough targets.
It pursues progress, not safety, demands transparent accountability and measures itself against the best.
A sporting nation with dimmed expectations avoids hard numbers, softens standards and reshapes metrics to avoid criticism.
It mistakes participation for performance and confuses comfort with care.
Which one are we becoming?
The hardest questions Malaysia must ask itself
“Any colour will do” is not a development philosophy. It is an exit door from uneasy scrutiny.
Is this truly about the well-being of athletes, or is it about shielding administrators from future embarrassment?
Is this a strategy rooted in performance, or in political convenience?
The SEA Games is our entry-level regional platform. If we remove gold ambitions here, what happens at the Asian Games? At the Commonwealth Games? At the Olympics?
If we fear expectations at regional level, how will we survive global competition?
If we genuinely believe in our athletes, we should challenge them, support them, and prepare them, not protect them from ambition with softer language and blurred targets.
Targets are not the enemy.
Fear is.
Malaysia can choose two paths: A future where hopes are softened, targets are blurred, and mediocrity is managed — not confronted.
Or a future where we demand gold, build systems that produce gold, and embrace the pressure that makes gold possible.
Malaysia cannot build champions by lowering the bar. It cannot become a true sporting nation by redefining success every time it fails to reach it.
In sport, as in life, pressure is not the enemy of greatness. Fear is.
And it is fear — not science, not progress, not athlete welfare — that currently appears to shape Malaysia’s retreat from the one colour that truly matters: gold.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.