The concept of Father’s Day is rooted in a very simple, noble premise: we take one day a year to celebrate the stoic, long-suffering figures who guided us through life, kept us from sticking forks into electrical sockets, and sacrificed their own youth so we could have a future.

In a properly functioning society, you reward that kind of paternal devotion with a nice watch, a decent steak, or at the very least, a modicum of rudimentary respect.

Unless, of course, you are an administrator in Malaysian sports. In which case, your idea of celebrating the ultimate father figure of national track cycling is to hand him a metaphorical slap in the face, spit on his twenty-year legacy, and actively try to ruin the futures of his sporting children.

Track cycling is, conceptually, the simplest sport on Earth. You sit on a bicycle. You pedal until your lungs scream for mercy. And you try to cross the finish line before the chap next to you. How hard can it be?

Apparently, it is so monumentally difficult that the men currently running Malaysian sports have looked at this elegant equation and decided what it really needs is a healthy dose of bureaucratic self-sabotage. Today, the entire national cycling apparatus is on the verge of driving itself off a cliff, entirely because a handful of men in polyester suits, who probably couldn’t ride a tricycle without training wheels, have decided to wage a petty war against the greatest coaching asset this country has ever known.

Enter John Beasley. For two decades, this towering Australian has been the patriarch, the mentor, the literal bapak of every ounce of glory Malaysian track cycling has ever squeezed out of a velodrome. He took a nation more accustomed to navigating traffic jams on federal highways and turned its athletes into world champions. He is, for all intents and purposes, more Malaysian than a midnight plate of nasi lemak. He has PR status, he understands the culture, and he possesses a vision for the sport that stretches far beyond the next calendar year. He is the ultimate sporting dad—the one who spent twenty years bleeding, sweating, and losing sleep so his kids could stand on Olympic podiums.

And yet, right now, he is packing his bags.

Why? Because the brilliant minds running several state cycling associations have engaged in a display of logic so profoundly backwards, it makes the design of the Reliant Robin look like a masterclass in automotive engineering.

To understand the sheer, unadulterated madness of this situation, you have to look at what happened just recently. The Junior Track World Championships were taking place in Belgium. This is the big league. The global stage. The Autobahn of competitive cycling, where the finest young talent on Earth gathers to see who can achieve supersonic speeds on a pushbike. Malaysia had elite junior riders ready to go. They had trained for this. They were primed to show the world what they could do.

Did they go? No.

The state associations refused to release them. They kept them back.

Why? Because they wanted them to compete in Sukma.

Let that sink into your cerebral cortex for a moment. They withheld world-class athletes from the World Championships so they could hoard medals at a local state-level games. This is not just a minor oversight; it is a full-blown sovereignty gambit by local warlords. This is the equivalent of buying a pristine, twin-turbocharged Ferrari SF90, parking it in your garage, and then refusing to drive it on the highway because you would rather use it to race a rusty, sputtering Kubota tractor at a village fete in Kuala Selangor. It is a level of small-minded parochialism that is genuinely breathtaking. They didn’t want global glory; they wanted to brag to the neighbouring district officer over a plate of mee goreng that their state won a shiny piece of tin.

Beasley, possessing the patience of a saint but the vocabulary of a frustrated racetrack mechanic, publicly called these administrators “naughty little kids.” Honestly, he was being far too polite. A naughty child breaks a vase or draws on the wall with crayons. These men are performing a slow-motion, administrative execution of young careers.

While Beasley is spending his weeks calculating precise gear ratios, analysing wind resistance, and figuring out how to shave three-thousandths of a second off a lap time, the committee members of these associations are engaged in a far more rigorous sport. They are starring in a badly scripted drama of bureaucratic theatre. They are arguing over who gets the largest curry puff at the catered buffet. They are debating who gets to sit in the VIP section of the grandstand, and which functionary gets their name printed in the largest font on the official banner.

It is a circus. You have a top brass completely devoid of a backbone, terrified of upsetting local bigwigs who treat state sports associations as their personal fiefdoms. Instead of providing leadership, the suits at the top are sitting on their hands, watching a twenty-year legacy unravel because they lack the testicular fortitude to tell a few state-level politicians to sit down and shut up. It insults the intelligence of every sports fan in the country.

The real tragedy here is the sheer, unadulterated disrespect shown to Beasley’s sacrifice. Two decades ago, this man gave up a century-old, highly successful family business in Melbourne. He packed up his life, moved to Malaysia, and spent the next twenty years sweating buckets inside the Nilai velodrome. He didn’t do it for the glamorous lifestyle—because let’s face it, Nilai is not Monte Carlo. He did it because he adopted these athletes as his own. He built Azizulhasni Awang into the “Pocket Rocketman,” an Olympic medalist who struck fear into the hearts of European giants.

Now, Azizulhasni himself has issued a chilling, stark warning: if Beasley walks, Malaysian cycling is doomed. It is finished. The train wreck will be absolute. And yet, the responses from the corridors of power have been nothing but a collective, indifferent shrug. They are treating a legendary master-coach like an replaceable spare part, as if you could just stroll down to the local pasar malam and pick up another world-class cycling guru for twenty ringgit.

This is the ultimate tragedy of modern sports administration in this country. It is an environment where ego always triumphs over excellence, where local political capital is valued far more than international prestige, and where the people in charge would rather rule over a graveyard than serve in a palace.

So, Happy Father’s Day, John Beasley. Sorry we treated your two decades of paternal guidance like a piece of trash.

If Beasley leaves, the suits will undoubtedly hold a press conference. They will form a sub-committee. They will draft a “blueprint” and launch a “transformation program” with a flashy logo and a catchy slogan.

And the result? It will be magnificent. The politicians and administrators will finally have exactly what they always wanted: absolute, uncontested control over a national team that is now dead last.

On that bombshell, back to football.