KUALA LUMPUR: The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) announced that the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) rejected Malaysia's request to host the badminton event for the 2026 Commonwealth Games.
OCM secretary-general Datuk Nazifuddin Najib said Malaysia proposed that the sport be held in Kuala Lumpur concurrently with the other 10 sports in Glasgow, Scotland, from July 23-Aug 2, 2026.
"We asked the CGF if Malaysia could run the badminton event at the same time as Glasgow hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games, but the request was rejected," he told reporters after the OCM executive council meeting here today.
Badminton is among the sports dropped from the 2026 Commonwealth Games to reduce the cost of hosting the Games in Glasgow.
Instead, only 10 sports will be contested across four venues within a 12.8-kilometre radius compared to the 19 sports at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, with approximately 3,000 athletes from 74 Commonwealth countries and territories expected to participate.
The listed sports are athletics and para athletics, swimming and para swimming, artistic gymnastics, track cycling and para track cycling, netball, weightlifting and powerlifting, boxing, judo, bowling and para bowling, 3x3 basketball, and wheelchair 3x3 basketball.
Glasgow, hosting the event for the second time after the 2014 edition, stepped in after Malaysia declined the offer to replace Victoria, Australia, which withdrew from hosting the 2026 edition.
Meanwhile, Nazifuddin said that withdrawing the national contingent from the 2026 Commonwealth Games would not be a wise move; instead, Malaysia are expected to field a smaller number of athletes to compete in Glasgow.
Additionally, he said the chef de mission (CDM) to the 2024 Paris Olympics, Datuk Hamidin Amin, expressed disappointment over Malaysia's failure to secure its first gold medal in his report to OCM president Tan Sri Norza Zakaria.
At the same time, Nazifuddin said that OCM would hold a post-mortem meeting on the 2024 Olympics with the National Sports Council on Thursday.
Malaysia concluded its campaign at the 2024 Paris Olympics by bringing home two bronze medals in badminton, won by Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik and Lee Zii Jia.
