KUANTAN, MALAYSIA - Eight public universities have been identified as having the potential to be developed as centres of excellence for niche sports.

They included Universiti Putra Malaysia as the centre for rugby, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for cricket, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for rowing and Universiti Teknologi Mara for football.

These centres are expected to be up and running by early next year.

Deputy Higher Education Minister Dr Hou Kok Chung said having niche sports in universities would enable the sports to be developed more effectively and bring about a bigger impact for athletes involved.

"It can also help create a generation of thinking athletes," he said in his speech before closing a workshop on action policy for sports development in public universities and guidelines on the setting up of such centres here yesterday.

Hou also said these centres would help to provide a clear direction on the grooming of skilled people in sports, recreation and health by having professional training programmes.

"These centres will be a reference point for the selected sports, which will include other activities such as talent scouting, research, studies, analysis and tests aimed at enhancing the athletes' achievements," he added.

Hou also said 15 more public universities had been identified as centres for focus sports.

"For a start, these centres will emphasise ways to beef up sports activities and programmes.

"Their progress and development will be monitored and supervised. If they show good progress, they will be turned into centres of excellence for niche sports as well," he added.

He said that it was about time a more concrete move was implemented to develop sports at universities which tended to emphasise academic excellence.

The Star/Asia News Network