Ng Joo Pong

Ng Joo Pong was Malaysia's first cycling Olympian — a tenacious road racer from Kuala Lumpur whose grit, earned on the open roads of Selangor in borrowed shoes and on a second-hand bicycle, made him one of the most remarkable athletes in Malaysian sporting history. Known throughout the country as "The King of the Road," he was born on 19 June 1946, the eldest of seventeen children in the Ng household. His path to cycling began with mischief. As a boy, Joo Pong would sneak away on his father's bicycle and pay the price with a beating when he returned home — but he never lost his love for the road. The defining moment came at school, when he sold 60 raffle booklets to earn a RM75 bicycle. That humble prize changed his life. By 1963, he had won a bronze medal at the inaugural Asian Cycling Championships in Kuala Lumpur. A year later, at just 18 years old, he stepped onto the starting line at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics — the first Malaysian cyclist ever to do so. His greatest day came at the 1966 Asian Games in Bangkok, where Joo Pong shocked the Asian cycling community by defeating the long-dominant Japanese to win individual gold in the long-distance race. He and teammates Conrad Talalla, Andrew Michael, and Jallaludin Yusof also claimed gold in the four-man 1,600-metre grass track team trial at Merdeka Stadium. He returned to the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968, and added a bronze medal at the 1970 Asian Games before hanging up his racing wheels. Life after competition was not always easy. He worked as an insurance salesman, then spent years waiting — thirty of them — for a taxi licence that eventually came with the assistance of a government minister. Through the hardships, he remained philosophical, often reflecting that his generation competed purely for the love of sport, not reward. In his later years, Joo Pong lived in Shah Alam. Strokes had taken a toll on his body and he spent years bedridden, but his mind stayed sharp and his spirit unbroken — he would still break into a smile, and more than once, a tear, when fellow Olympians came to visit. He passed away on 21 October 2026, at the age of 80. He leaves behind a road that every Malaysian cyclist now rides on.