Kuala Lumpur: After chairing the 2014 Asian Games post-mortem meeting at Dewan Komanwel, National Sport Council (MSN) on Tuesday, Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin announced that the Danish badminton legend Morten Frost Hansen had been offered a position as technical director at BAM.
If Frost accepted the offer, this would be his second stint with the Malaysian national team. He was with BAM for 3½ years from 1997-2000 as national coaching director. During that time, he managed to produce some of the best badminton players in the world such as Wong Choong Hann, James Chua and Lee Tsuen Seng.
Most importantly, there would be no Lee Chong Wei if not for Morten Frost. At that time, Morten Frost has to travel to Penang to get Lee Chong Wei to the national camp because local talent scouts just won’t select him. Lee Chong Wei also mentioned in his autobiography that when he was noticed by Morten Frost, Frost had to persuade the BAM board profusely to accept Lee into the National Sports Institution.
Bringing back Morten Frost is indeed a right move to restore Malaysia’s badminton supremacy. However, BAM should also give Frost the power and support he needed to foster and forge the development of top-level talent.
Jamaluddin also added, if Frost agreed, he could start his duties in March 2015.
