The Youth and Sports Ministry has extended the ‘Road to Rio’ project by introducing the Podium Program, which will be aimed at improving the quality of athletes for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The main mission of the program is to ensure that the nation’s athletes are capable of securing gold medals at the Olympics games and have a top ten ranking in the upcoming Asian Games and Commonwealth Games.
The athletes chosen for the program would stand a chance to be treated like sports stars.This would mean that their food intakes, coaching and training facilities will be specialized for each athlete.
The decision was announced after the Youth and Sports ministry restructured the National Sports Council (NSC) and National Sports Institute (NSI), allowing NSI to cover a larger scope of the sport while the NSC will return to their original duties of coordinating and preparing athletes for upcoming competitions.
There were recent problems between the two independent bodies and that caused chaos within the Malaysian sports scene. Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin believes that the restructuring will be a good start to improve the development of various athletes and sports within the nation.
Photo Credits: Free Malaysia Today
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