National Athletes\u27 Perceived Image of the Government in the Development of Sports in Malaysia

Malaysian national sports depend on the support of the government to further improve its quality and continue to grow. The declining quality of Malaysian sports prompted this study, which seeks to explore the perceptions of the Malaysian government’s sport development efforts through the lens of the national athletes and provide recommendations that could lead to strengthened sports development and improved quality of sports in Malaysia. This research intends to compare the results obtained from current and former national athletes and compare it with the Sport Policy Factors Leading to International Sporting Success or SPLISS Model (Bosscher et al., 2006), which identified nine pillars that influence elite sporting success and main issues in Malaysian sports. The nine pillars are financial support, integrated approach to policy development, sport participation, talent identification and development system, athletic and post career support, training facilities, coaching provision and coach development, national and international competitions, and scientific research and sports medicine support. The main issues identified in Malaysian sports include lack of management skills, incompetency of sport administrators, lack of financial aids, corruption, and involvement of politicians in sports (Fiah et al., 2014). This study will provide a foundation of research on sports development in Malaysia due to the dearth of research on this topic. The results revealed eight main themes along with one recommendation. The themes were nothing, adequate competition opportunities, financial incentives, with a subtheme of insufficient financial support, good access to the NSI, adequate physical resources, high quality coaching, lack of post career support, and increased funding and exposure while one recommendation was improved communication. When compared to the SPLISS model, the government is providing good support in most of the pillars. When compared to the main issues in Malaysian sports and recommendation from previous studies, this study did not yield the same results, although was highlighted by some of the athletes