Kuala Lumpur: The Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) confirmed that it has contacted Indonesia’s former men’s doubles world champion Rexy Mainaky, who also won the 1996 Olympic gold medal with Ricky Subagja, for the new Coaching Director position at BAM.
BAM’s Coaching and Training Committee (C&T) chairman Ng Chin Chai however said that besides Rexy Mainaky, the organization still in the process of interviewing few other candidates.
“Rexy was one of the people we contacted. We are all still in the negotiation stage, talking about salary, contract, KPI (Key Performance Indicator) and other incentives,” said Ng.
“All the candidates we’ve contacted still bound by contracts with their current employers. I believe we should be able to appoint a new coaching director early next year,” added Ng.
Ng was talking to reporters after welcoming the 2018 Youth Olympics gold medalist, Goh Jin Wei, at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) on Monday.
Rexy Mainaky is currently Thailand’s High Performance director, he was able to bring back an Olympic gold medal for Indonesia through Tontowi Ahmad/Liliyana Natsir in the Rio Olympic mixed doubles event during his tenure as The Badminton Association of Indonesia or PBSI’s High Performance Director. He was also the person who decided to play youngsters such as Jonatan Christie, and Anthony Sinisuka Ginting in many tournaments, and these two players have now grown to become top men’s singles shuttlers in the world. One of his signature moves in PBSI was to pair up the red-hot and current World No. 1 men’s doubles player Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo and Marcus Fernaldi Gideon, when Gideon was not even part of PBSI.
The former world No. 1 men’s doubles ace had worked for BAM for 7 years before he called it quit in 2012. He was also the person who teamed up Koo Kien Keat/Tan Boon Heong that saw the duo winning Malaysia’s first Asian Games gold medal in 36 years in Doha, 2006. Koo/Tan then continued to rule the world for about six months, winning all tournaments along the way including the 2007 All England. The Malaysian pair started falling apart when players began to behave arrogantly and over confidence which eventually led to disciplinary problems.
