Will Malaysia ever have centre of excellence for judo?

If you talk to people in the Malaysian judo scene you will hear them discuss things like, "How can we produce a SEA Games champion?" or "How can we get a player to qualify for the Olympics?"

One of the key challenges is that Malaysian judo is so fragmented. You have strong clubs in Penang, Perak (ATM), Terengganu and Johor (sports schools). And you also have some good players here and there from a few different states. In short, our promising athletes are all over the place.

Even in places where they have a critical mass of judo players, the people there train with the same folks day-in  and day-out. It's hard to improve when you're just training and sparring against the same people all the time.

It would be ideal if Malaysia could have a centre of excellence where players from various clubs could come together for training at a central location and experience sparring with other players. I know there have been attempts by people involved in Malaysian judo to do this and to have it based in KL but so far nothing has come to fruition.

Granted even if a centre of excellence were established, it would still be hard for players from the far ends of the country to come to KL for regular training. A bus trip from other states will take between two hours to four hours depending on where you are coming from. But it's not impossible to imagine a team taking the trouble to travel even four hours for a good joint training session perhaps once a month. If they felt the training was worth it, they could do it. But will it happen?

Until it does, we can all stop dreaming about getting a SEA Games champion or qualifying a player for the Olympics. Players training in silos in different parts of the country is no way to build up top athletes.