Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin saw a silver lining in criticism over puny cash prizes for a recent youth cycling competition.

Khairy said the bad press over the RM30 cash prize brought more publicity to the Junior Cycling Malaysia programme.

“The positive thing is that people now know what JCM is,” he told reporters in Kuala Lumpur today.

“The problem was when we gave cash prizes and made mock cheques. So next time we will give vouchers or something else.”

He said before this, Sportexcel programme or the National Football Development Programme (NFDP) under the ministry’s purview, only gave medals and not cash prizes.

“So there was no issue for NFDP, Sportexcel or the national athletes who say previously, they didn’t even get cash but only Milo packets as prizes. To them, the prize was never an issue,” he said.

He explained that the RM2 million allocated by the ministry not only covers the April 9 race, but 16 other tournaments nationwide.

It includes cost of providing bicycles and other equipment, as well as sponsorship for selected cyclists to enter competitions abroad.

“So please don’t misunderstand - it was not only for the Serdang programme, but the entire programme,” he said.

The JCM caught bad press after pictures of winners holding mock cheques went viral.

The cheques showed the first prize winner for the Under 9 category won a prize of RM30 while the third prize winner won RM10.

The picture went viral on the internet with netizens slamming the ministry for breaking the children’s spirits with minuscule prizes.

Khairy said the ministry prefer to teach children the value of competition rather than spoil them with cash prizes, while parents of the winners said their children were ecstatic to win and were not badly affected by the relatively small cash prize.