KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) president, Datuk Subahan Kamal has admitted that the national senior men’s side have a slim chance of advancing to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games by way of an appeal process.
However, he said that MHC will not stay silent and instead will continue to pursue efforts especially in convincing the international Hockey Federation (FIH) delegation congress from November 1-3 which is expected will discuss the matter at hand.
"FIH chief executive officer Thierry Weil did respond via mail correspondence stating that it cannot be considered at present because it has to go through the IOC (International Olympic Committee), but I will go to New Delhi and I will try my very best to explain during the congress.
“Honestly our chances are very slim, however this does not mean that we will not continue to try. We do not want to just sit back and wait for a decision without making any effort,” stressed Subahan.
Before this, Malaysia had presented a proposal to FIH and the Asian Hockey Federation (AHF) for the silver medallists in the men’s and women’s hockey event of the 2018 Asian Games to qualify automatically for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
However, in a response to AHF before this, Weil had stressed that it is difficult to change the Olympic Games qualifying system which was determined by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and not the FIH.
Malaysia lost on penalties in the Asian Games men’s final to Japan and therefore missed out on an automatic qualifying berth to Tokyo because only the gold medallists are entitled to it.
The same scenario happened in the women’s final when India went down to Japan as well.
According to FIH’s format, if Japan as the Olympic Games hosts were to emerge as champions at the Asian Games, then the automatic quota for the Olympics would go to the Olympic Games qualifying campaign which will take place next year.
The campaign begins with the Hockey Series Final which takes place from April 23 to May 1 next year at the Bukit Jalil National Hockey Stadium, where the two best teams will advance to Olympics Qualifying Final event at the end of next year which is the final step towards qualifying to feature in Tokyo.
