No Gold But LCW Hit The World

Going by the article on Forbes, Dato' Lee Chong Wei might be the most talked about man in cyberworld immediately after his long stroke shuttle hit outside the the back boundary line and missed the much awaited Gold Medal at London2012. 

Gist of the report: 

• 16,847 tweets per minute mentioning about the outcome of the Sunday match
• mentions of Lee Chong Wei himself have spiked to over 9,200 tweets per minutes!
• Lee Chong Wei garnered nearly 500,000 mentions on Sunday. (Lin Dan only 238,000 mentions)
• added close to 50,000 new followers on Twitter in 24 hours after his match.
• #ThankYouLeeChongWei reached No. 3 in the Twitter’s Worldwide Trends list after the match ended

ESPN commentator is right when he said:

Jonathan Liew of The Telegraph wrote: he [Lee Chong Wei] may be Malaysia’s only genuinely world-class athlete, with all the crushing expectation that entails. 

London2012 is still running (at this blog post time) but it has already filled with attractions. Nor Suryani Mohd Taibi, became first women to compete with an eight month pregnancy period and won her the Baron de' Coubertain medal. A Korean fencer, Shin A-Lam  refuses to leave the piste being not satisfied with the judging and losing to Germany's Britta Heidermann in the Women's Individual Epee. 

Will Lee Chong Wei - Lin Dan's clash be part of Olympic history to date?

Can Dato' Lee Chong Wei be nominated as "Malaysia's Man of The Year 2012". He has showed us that sports is the uniting factor of one country especially when it relates to Malaysia being a multi-ethnical country. 

Our Golden Dream Carry Forward To Rio 2016

When the shuttlecock falls outside the back boundary line on Lin Dans court it seals off our hope of bringing home the first ever Gold Medal from the Olympic that we participated (as Malaya) since 1956. Sabah too sent an independant team to the 1956 Olympic as North Borneo

To date Malaysia had won five Olympic Medals and all came from Badminton.Our first Olympic medal was from the Sidek brothers of Razif and Jailani in 1992 Barcelona Olympics and it was a Bronze. Then in the next Olympic at Atlanta in 1996, Malaysia achieved a Silver and a Bronze. Ever since our best achievement is just a Silver. That's why London 2012 is our first Gold target. Malaysia is hoping the Gold comes from Dato' Lee Chong Wei because he is World number one badminton player but Lin Dan played a better game  to dash our hope.   

Medal	Name	Games	Sport	Event
Bronze	Razif Sidek & Jalani Sidek	1992 Barcelona	Badminton	Men's doubles
Silver	Cheah Soon Kit & Yap Kim Hock	1996 Atlanta	Badminton	Men's doubles
Bronze	Rashid Sidek	1996 Atlanta	Badminton	Men's singles
Silver	Lee Chong Wei	2008 Beijing	Badminton	Men's singles
Silver	Lee Chong Wei	2012 London	Badminton	Men's singles

Graphic from HERE

Dato' Lee Chong Wei lost to his arch rival Lin Dan from China at Wembly Arena in London in a hard fought match. He wins the first game 21-15 but went down in the second game 10-21 and finally in the rubber 19-21. He gave out all his best to fulfill the hopes of 28 million Malaysians.

There are also comments that he depended on painkillers to play the finals which led to National Sports Institute has to come out with this statement;

Oneisn M'sia

Untuk pengetahuan umum, saya ingin menjelaskan bahawa Datuk Lee Chong Wei bukannya "on painkillers all the time". Pertamanya "painkillers" adalah ubat penahan sakit seperti Pethidine dan Morphine, kelas opiates, yang dilarang pengambilannya dalam sukan. Ubat yang diambil adalah "non-steroidal anti-inflammatory" atau NS

AID misalnya Voltaren, Cataflam - yang ada mengurangkan radangan dan olehitu dapat mengurangkan kesakitan. Keduanya, beliau bukan sentiasa mengambil ubat NSAID. Hanya apabila perlu, mengikut keadaan dan dengan arahan doktor. Penggunaan istilah yang longgar dan maklumat yang tidak tepat mungkin menimbulkan tanggapan negatif kepada orangramai serta tidak menguntungkan sesiapa. Terima kasih / Dato' Dr. Ramlan Abd. Aziz, Ketua Pegawai Perubatan Kontingen

Then post on Facebook was this uncalled for comments from a Malaysian who tries to make a mockery of the outcome on his tweeter that angered sports fan. He should not have made the comments in the first place at the time when all Malaysians feels sad with the lost. Every Malaysian was looking forward for Dato' Lee Chong Wei to bring back our first Olympic Gold. he did his best but lost to a better player. That is sports and a sportsman accept defeat with decorum and not send out sarcastic messages to the players. 

Then again our media practice is not much of help to heal the wound with this Kosmo frontpage. Kosmo think that Dato' Lee played for the RM 4 million perks and personally I think this is an insult to Dato' Lee. Even though the Editor put in a mild way but when he bring up the issue of monetary gain, it gives a negative perception to the public. If Dato' Lee did win the Gold medal, the public might think that he won because of the money and not for the pride. When will our media change and be a sportsmanship enhancer?

New Straits Times put it in a consoling way with full respect to Dato' LCW while Berita Harian published his apology to the people of Malaysia. However most sports fans in Malaysia specifically and the world over generally (based on Facebook comments) wanted Dato' Lee to reserve his apology because they had seen how he fought all the way to the last point. Sports fans are satisfied with his performance even though Malaysia loose the expected Gold medal.

Dato' Lee himself posted his apology to the people of Malaysia on his tweeter 

Even badminton fans from China respected Dato' Lee's sporting spirit when we ourself making negative comments. 

This post is from Lin Dan's Fans Club in China. It reads:

(Translation)Thank you very much, Lee Chong Wei, Thank you for being such a noble and worthy opponent, and thank you for 10 years of company - without Lee Chong Wei's worthiness, there will not be any Lin Dan's worthiness; without Lee Chong Wei's persistence and perseverance, there will not be any progression for Lin Dan. Lee Chong Wei missed his first Gold Medal, but he didn't fail. We felt for his cries.

Credit: Christopher Tock

Credit

Finally the pic that show Dato' Lee.

Photo Credit 

Photo Credit