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2nd September, 2010
IPOH: The Special Olympics Malaysia (SOM) has been recognised as one of the four strong programmes in the Asian region, besides Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.
Special Olympics-Asia Pacific, Managing Director David Rutherford when met at the recent SOM 2nd National Games 2010 at Perak Stadium confidently said: “We expect those programmes to grow strongly over the next five to 10 years.”
“We have some 130,000 special athletes in Asia for which 15,000 are in Malaysia. We hope to grow to 500,000 athletes (in five to 10 years), then I think it will be good,” he said.
According to him, some 56,000 events including 23 national games and one World Games were organised by Special Olympics in the past four years around the world, so looking at this progress, he said there is no lacking in their efforts to promote Special Olympics.
“Malaysia has a strong programme by world standard, and we think it can become much stronger. We think it is a real opportunity that Malaysia has actually worked together with Special Olympics to be there,” he said.
In the development of sports, he said we have to look at two aspects, namely to develop the community, particularly the young people from all abilities and the elite athletes.
“In Special Olympics, we focus on community development and it is completely separate in trying to get Olympic gold medals as it needs a lot of investment and support from the government,” he said.
However, he noted that lately India had recorded a significant growth in their sports development as a few fast athletes had been groomed and this is largely due to the support from the government.
Since the establishment of Special Olympics in 1968, it has served more than 3.4 million athletes with intellectual disabilities working with hundreds of thousands of volunteers and coaches each year.
Special Olympics provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities.
Those activities give them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship.
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