Beijing Olympics: ASEAN Should Send a Single Team to the Olympics

ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, should send a single, unified team to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, and especially to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom.

ASEAN supposedly has the goal of forming an EU-style union from ASEAN's current ten members by the year 2015. To achieve support for that goal, the governments of ASEAN's member states have to work much harder to instill as sense of comraderie among Southeast Asians. As is, there is not much Southeast Asian solidarity, and countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia are already struggling with forming a common ethnicity within their own lands. Having a single, ASEAN team at the Olympics would go some ways toward forming a single ASEAN ethnicity. Thais, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Singaporeans would all be rooting for ASEAN to win. When ASEAN wins, they feel that they've won; when ASEAN loses, they feel that they've lost. By having one team for all the ten member states of ASEAN, ASEAN can become a stronger ideal for the average Southeast Asian citizen.

One single Olympic team for ASEAN would also boost the odds of ASEAN winning a fair amount of medals. The total ASEAN population numbers around 600 million people. The largest single state in ASEAN, Indonesia, has only around 250 million people. By sheer dint of numbers, with 600 million people, ASEAN should be able to win a fair amount of medals, even gold. To date, even the most successful Southeast Asian nations have only a few medals to their names.

However, the advantage of a unified, ASEAN Olympic team is that it would also allow for Southeast Asian athletes who show potential to train in the most advanced athletics facilities in Southeast Asia, alongside the top athletes in Southeast Asia, and be coached by the top coaches in Southeast Asia. The talent from across the region can be consolidated into a few sports centers.

Alternatively, ASEAN athletes who show potential can be sent to other countries to work on their sport, in a similar fashion to what many African and Caribbean countries do by having many of their athletes emigrate to the United States. ASEAN athletes can be sent to the United States or, closer to home, Australia. Yet, Singapore has decent sporting facilities in several fields, so at least some of the ASEAN athletes can be 'home-grown.'

Ultimately, from a pragmatical standpoint, a country winning some medals is fairly irrelevant. Zimbabwe's gold medals will not turn Zimbabwe into a developed country by themselves. Nor will China's medal haul turn the People's Republic automatically into a superpower.

But having Olympics medals do bring a nation pride, and ASEAN--both as a group and as individual states--can use some of that. They also put a country on the map, if only temporarily. There could be many people looking up Jamaica around the world in recent days.

There is also precedent. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the now-independent former Soviet Republics sent a single team to the Olympics. North Korea and South Korea have had a single, unified Olympic team, too. And several prominent Europeans have suggested that the European Union should send one team representing the EU to the Olympics.

So, for the nationalism they bring, for the pride they bring, the governments and peoples of Burma, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam should consider pooling their resources and talent, and send a single, unified, ASEAN team to future Olympics.

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