Sports
Malaysia’s Best SEA Games Performance in the Last Decade
Malaysia is among the leading sporting countries within Southeast Asia that participate in the SEA Games. In the last decade, the country has been blessed with numerous incredible performances by its athletes. Malaysian athletes have made impressive records that will forever be etched in people’s memories. All these amazing performances have resulted from hard work and dedication. If you’re a fan of Malaysian sports, check out the following highlights.
Domination in Track and Field at the SEA Games 2017
The 2017 SEA Games held in Kuala Lumpur provided Malaysia with a great opportunity to showcase its best sporting skills. This event took place at home ground and was the biggest success in Malaysia’s SEA Games history because the nation took second position after clinching 145 gold medals. The athletes performed exceptionally well due to the intense pressure from home fans.
Malaysians have always exhibited great passion when it comes to following their national athletes during all competitions. The intense home pressure during the 2017 Kuala Lumpur SEA Games made many fans seek better ways of enjoying the competition, such as online betting via wagering sites that provide information like athlete stats. These sites provide fans with a great opportunity to bet based on an athlete’s form.
Success in Aquatics and Rise of Malaysian Swimmers
As far as SEA Games competitions go, this decade has witnessed Malaysian swimmers’ rise and success at multiple editions. Welson Sim became a renowned swimmer and earned multiple SEA Games titles as a premier freestyle swimmer. The Malaysian aquatics team managed to perform excellently and produced some of the best talents of this decade in Malaysia.
The back-to-back medals of Welson Sim in the 2017 and 2019 tournaments elevated his status to a national hero of Malaysia. In addition to celebrating aquatic success, Malaysian sports fans found out that platforms with a live casino feature provide them with an opportunity to interactively entertain themselves while waiting for the next big sporting event. Thus, these platforms grew in popularity among sports fans in Malaysia because they combine two types of activities in one – playing and enjoying dynamic entertainment.
MMA & Combat Sports of Malaysia: Medals Galore
The decade saw some spectacular results in terms of combat and martial arts performance by Malaysian athletes at the SEA Games. The following disciplines can be singled out due to constant and stable medal results during these years:
- Silat – the traditional martial art of Malaysia that has been dominating this discipline at the SEA Games over the past ten years.
- Pencak Silat – Malaysian sportsmen proved their superiority over their regional rivals in both artistic and competitive disciplines.
- Boxing – Malaysian boxing teams showed a high level of preparation, winning bronze and silver medals throughout the decade.
- Taekwondo – Despite being quite young compared to other countries, Malaysian sportsmen managed to win some medals in taekwondo.
These sports represent not only a part of the culture of Malaysia but also significant investments in the future of sports.
Cycling and Badminton: Malaysia’s Strongholds
Being recognized as the most successful sport in the world, badminton was a dominant discipline for Malaysia in all of its SEA Games editions. For example, athletes such as Goh Liu Ying and Chan Peng Soon became silver medalists in the mixed doubles in 2016 Olympic Games after winning medals at the previous SEA Games. Moreover, Malaysia also excelled in track cycling.
Malaysia’s badminton program can rely on Akademi Badminton Malaysia, which successfully develops young athletes from the grassroots level. At the same time, track cycling has also shown excellent results over the decades due to systematic training and international experience. These sports contribute to a considerable number of Malaysian medals in the tournament annually.
Gymnastics and Shooting: Medals That Fly Under the Radar But Still Count
Malaysian gymnastics and shooting teams have made their own contributions quietly yet effectively over the years for this decade’s medal tally. Gymnast Farah Ann Abdul Hadi rose to prominence following her impressive displays at the 2015 Singapore SEA Games, when she garnered several golds. Her talent and grace helped expose gymnastics as an athletic pursuit among the general Malaysian populace. Similarly, shooting athletes have displayed their precision in competitions through rifle and pistol categories at several SEA Games editions.
Decade of the Heart, of Determination, and of Glory
Malaysia’s decade of the SEA Games is a true reflection of the achievements made possible by systematic planning, cultural enthusiasm, and sheer grit from athletes. From local dominance in 2017 to stellar results in combat sports and aquatics, Malaysia has done well to enhance its reputation in the region.
By Dipo Olowookere
A fully synthetic multilingual Artificial Intelligence (AI) presenter known as AILA has been unveiled by Flashscore, one of the world’s largest digital sports data and news platforms.
Flashscore, which boasts more than 155 million monthly users, said the AI presenter was developed in collaboration with a creative high-value AI production studio, Fameplay.
AILA turns Flashscore’s sports data-driven features and narratives into localised presenter-led video, a statement from the company made available to Business Post said.
It anchored Route 48, Flashscore’s player-by-player data profile series, in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, and fronted an app-download campaign across Latin America, Spain and France, speaking each market’s language natively.
On the strength of that run, Flashscore is now ready to extend AILA across product and editorial announcements, original shows and partnerships.
Flashscore noted that AILA does not replace human editorial teams or studios, but rather complements them effectively and adds an always-available element.
“AILA was created by deliberately separating two distinct elements. The performance itself, the movement, facial expressions, and on-screen presence, was licensed from a real actress. The face, however, was built entirely from scratch: fully synthetic and fully owned,” the Chief AI Producer and co-founder of Fameplay, Lukáš Záhoř, stated.
“AILA can speak in dozens of languages, across any format, at any time, without being constrained by the availability or limitations of a human performer.
“Most synthetic presenters, by contrast, borrow a real person’s face and simply hope no one asks who actually owns it. For Flashscore, we created an asset that will only become more valuable over time, not a deepfake that lasts only until the first lawsuit,” Záhoř added.
Also commenting, the Chief Digital Content Officer at Livesport, Alan Záruba, said, “Our newsroom reaches millions of people, and we built our own studios to enhance our content the way we want it.
“AILA is an extension of that, not a departure from it. We want to stay at the forefront of the current digital development and AI-powered stream. When we briefed Fameplay on how to handle the concept of an AI digital avatar which can radically change the way we would scale our content, we wrote a single line to define future AILA: she’s built from numbers, but she speaks in stories.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria’s Super Falcons have failed to qualify for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup after suffering a 2-1 defeat to South Africa in their play-off encounter on Thursday night.
The Nigerian team, reeling from a 1-0 loss to Cameroon in the quarter-finals of the CAF Women’s African Cup of Nations (WAFCON) on Sunday, showed no signs of putting their misery to bed as they went two goals down to the Bayana Bayana team. It took a late penalty scored by Christy Uchebe to halve the deficit after the South Africans went down to 10 players.
The Super Falcons needed a victory against their opponents to progress to the next stage of the qualification process and secure one of the two available tickets to the intercontinental play-offs. The defeat ended their hopes of making it to the 2027 tournament, which will be hosted by Brazil.
The result brings an end to Nigeria’s remarkable record of appearing at every edition of the Women’s World Cup since the tournament was first held in 1991.
The play-offs were introduced to determine the final African representatives after four teams were eliminated at the quarter-final stage of the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Two qualification tickets were available, with Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire battling for the opportunity to advance.
Ghana secured one of the available tickets after defeating Côte d’Ivoire 2-1, while South Africa claimed the other following their victory over the Super Falcons.
The Super Falcons had featured in all previous editions of the tournament, making their absence from the 2027 World Cup a significant moment in the history of Nigerian women’s football.
It also raises fresh questions about the direction of Nigerian national football after the Super Eagles also failed to qualify for the recently concluded FIFA World Cup held in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.
European football returns with a bang as the new season kicks off. The dust has barely settled on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but European football wastes no time getting back to business. Over the next two weeks, the continent’s prominent competitions will launch in quick succession, giving fans a dense run of fixtures across the UEFA Super Cup, the FA Community Shield, La Liga, the Premier League and Serie A.
Paris Saint-Germain, fresh off back-to-back Champions League triumphs, faces Aston Villa in the UEFA Super Cup on Wednesday 12 August at 8pm which will be airing on Supersport across DStv & GOtv, with the French side chasing a second successive Super Cup crown against an Aston Villa team that has become an increasingly serious force in European competition.
England’s traditional curtain-raiser follows four days later. The FA Community Shield, staged in Cardiff on Sunday 16 August at 3pm, pits Premier League champions Arsenal against FA Cup holders Manchester City, the latter beginning life under new manager Enzo Maresca, while Arsenal look to reinforce their status as the team to beat.
Spain gets moving over the same weekend, with La Liga’s opening round running from Saturday 15 to Monday 17 August. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid have all been given extended rest following Spain’s World Cup win, leaving the door open for the chasing pack to set an early pace before Matchday 2 arrives from 20 to 24 August.
The Premier League then starts the following weekend, running from Friday 21 to Monday 24 August. Champions Arsenal open their title defence at home to promoted Coventry, before a full round of fixtures featuring Manchester United, Tottenham, Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea, among others, round out the opening weekend. Serie A joins the calendar on the same weekend, from 22 to 24 August, with holders Inter Milan starting their title defence against Monza and Napoli, Juventus, Milan and Roma all in early action.
With five major competitions launching inside a fortnight, the new European season promises an unrelenting start. All the action will be available live on SuperSport, across DStv and GOtv.
