Yesterday is a very auspicious day as its date is 18.08.18. It is also picked as the day for the opening ceremony of the 18th Asian Games; Jakarta Palembang 2018. For the first time in the history of the games, the games are being co-hosted in two cities. In the original bidding for this edition of the games, Hanoi is declared the winning host city after defeating Surabaya, Indonesia. However, not long after, Hanoi dropped out of the hosting duty due to financial constraint. Indonesia is then selected to host the games and two cities have been brought forward to the task; Jakarta (its capital) and Palembang.
This is the second time Indonesia is hosting the games. The country previously hosted the 4th Asian Games back in 1962 at Jakarta. How many times have Malaysia hosted Asian Games? None. It is quite an embarrassing fact that my country have not hosted it before. We have the sports infrastructure, we have all the other supporting facilities, we have the manpower, and we have the capability to do so and yet we have not done it before. Our glory in hosting mega sporting event stopped at 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. That was already 20 years ago.
Malaysia should look seriously into bidding for another large-scale international sporting event and should start with this Asian Games. I don’t think we will need to spend a lot since we already have most of the infrastructure in place. The KL Sports City (Bukit Jalil complex) is capable of handling most of the games. Our neighbouring country, Thailand had hosted it four times and we are still at zero. We should really set sight on hosting Asian Games. Hangzhou (China) has been selected to host the 2022 edition will Nagoya (Japan) is also chosen to host the 2026 edition. Malaysia should come forward with huge effort to bid for the 2030 edition. And then, let’s carry on the tide by bidding for 2032 Summer Olympic Games (need to work together with Singapore for a single bid on this one).
Anyway, best of luck to all the participating 449 Malaysian athletes in 2018 Asian Games. We are among the ten largest contingent in this games and we should be having no problem to get into top 10 position in the overall medal tally too. We have to do much better than our previous participation in the Incheon 2014 edition that only won 5 gold medals, 14 silver medals and 14 bronze medals for a 14th place finish.
Jakarta Palembang 2018 opened yesterday with an opening ceremony that saw a unique entrance moment by Indonesian President, Joko Widodo on a cool motorbike ride. Next, the synchronization of the performers is something to be praised and I always love this kind of performances where a huge number of performers are involved to make the synchronization works beautifully. By the way, I only watched the highlight of the ceremony (not able to watch the whole thing as I couldn’t find any platform to watch the whole ceremony online). A huge stage setup of a volcanic mountain, waterfall and vegetation became the centrepiece of the show as the volcano forms the cauldron for the symbolic torch lighting segment. There were also some singing and performances showcasing Indonesian culture. The ceremony ended with typical fireworks display.
The games will run until 2nd September 2018 (day of its closing ceremony).
(Images and video in this post are from various sources throughout the world wide web)
