KUALA LUMPUR – The head of the Malaysian Athletes Career and Education (MACE) Secretariat at the National Sports Council (NSC), Datuk Shalin Zulkifli, is calling on athletes to proactively plan for their retirement.
She said MACE was set up to help both current and recently retired athletes in charting their post-competition paths.
Established during Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman’s tenure as youth and sports minister, MACE aims to address the challenges faced by athletes transitioning out of their competitive careers, particularly in light of financial struggles that have been spotlighted in the news.
“We hold awareness programmes to guide athletes interested in furthering their education, informing them about universities offering scholarships and advising on the application process under the sports or higher education ministry.
“We also give them training for essential skills, such as the use of Microsoft Office or how to make presentations,” said Shalin during a panel discussion titled ‘Forging Greatness and Counting the Cost’ at the Asian Sports Summit organised by the Asian International Arbitration Centre (AIAC) and the Sports Law Associaton Malaysia (SLAM) here recently.
Five-time world champion Shalin urged athletes to take responsibility for their post-retirement plans but also revealed that MACE has been struggling to get athletes to join.
“Only 20% of the athletes join the programmes. Some of them think that someone will always take care of them when they retire.
“You have to realise that the government and the sports associations can only take care of you to a certain extent.
“You have to make plans on how you are going to take care of yourself, you have to make the right decisions for yourself,” said the four-time Asian Games gold medallist.
According to Shalin, a survey conducted by MACE with 500 active athletes last year indicated that many aspired to become coaches post-retirement.
However, a significant number lacked coaching certification, often assuming they had ample time left in their competitive careers.
“But when we asked them ‘do you have a coaching certificate?’ Most of them said no. We then asked why not. They replied that they still had a good 10 years left in them to compete.
“But being an athlete you never know when you might need to retire early because of injury or you get dropped because of budget cuts and so on.
“We try to educate them, but it is hard because when you compete at a high level you have an ego.
“They think your life is over when you retire, but I try to remind them that it is the beginning of a new chapter,” said the Commonwealth Tenpin Bowling Championships gold medallist.
The panel, moderated by Scoop assistant news editor Julie Jalaluddin, also featured insights from Malaysia Olympians Association president Noraseela Mohd Khalid and Paralympic Council of Malaysia president Datuk Seri Megat D. Shahriman Zaharudin. – January 22, 2024