By Vikneswaran Raman
PARIS, Aug 12 (Bernama) -- Malaysia ended the 2024 Paris Olympic Games yesterday in tied 80th spot with Albania, Grenada and Puerto Rico after managing just two bronze medals, despite targeting a maiden gold medal which remains elusive.
Badminton came to the rescue yet again, as men’s doubles pair of Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik and men’s singles shuttler Lee Zii Jia contributed a bronze medal as the Games concluded after 19 days, last night.
Malaysia’s best achievement was in the Rio 2016 Games with a haul of four silvers and a bronze, besides other medal outings in Tokyo 2020 (0-1-1), London 2012 (0-1-1), Beijing 2008 (0-1-0), Atlanta 1996 (0-1-1) and Barcelona 1992 (0-0-1), with a majority of the medals contributed by badminton.
Apart from the eight silver and seven bronze medals, the national contingent has returned empty-handed from all other editions since first participating in Melbourne 1956, with the exception of the boycotted 1980 Moscow Olympics.
In the 2024 Paris Olympics, Malaysia represented by 26 athletes from nine sports, with over half of them debutants, managed to renew three national records and five athletes improved their personal best, while many displayed sheer determination.
The three national records were renewed by weightlifter Mohamad Aniq Kasdan in men’s 61kg, cyclists Datuk Mohd Azizulhasni Awang and Nurul Izzah Izzati Mohd Asri in the men’s and women’s sprint, respectively.
Throughout the Paris edition held from July 26 to Aug 11, four countries bagged their coveted first gold medal, unfortunately Malaysia wasn’t one them, despite millions spend on preparations, including through the Road to Gold (RTG) programme introduced last year.
Botswana sprinter Letsile Tebogo blazed through the purple track in Stade de France during the men’s 200m, Julien Alfred claimed the women’s 100m title for Saint Lucia (which is also a first ever medal), Thea LaFond bagged the women’s triple jump gold for Dominica (first medal) and shooter Adriana Ruano Oliva landed Guatemala’s first gold via the women’s trap.
Sadly, the elusive gold still continues to haunt Malaysia, since none of the 26 athletes came close for a gold contention this time as in the case of Rio 2016 with three representatives advancing to the badminton finals and Tokyo 2020 when Mohd Azizulhasni narrowly missed the men’s keirin gold.
Notably, Southeast Asian neighbours, the Philippines bagged two gold and two bronze, Indonesia bagged two gold and a bronze, Thailand finished their campaign with a gold, three silver and two bronze.
As for Malaysia, badminton continued to be the most successful and reliable sport when three representatives advanced to the semi-finals but despite producing some stunning performances along the way against the world’s best, they could not seal victories during defning moments.
Aaron-Wooi Yik who arrived in Paris and the 2022 World champions and defending bronze medallists, had ended their three-match losing streak to Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty of India and march into the semi-finals, but were unable to crack the Chinese ‘Great Wall’ of Liang Wei Keng-Wang Chang.
Zii Jia, who also arrived eyeing the glittering gold, was on track by eliminating home favourite Toma Junior Popov and Anders Antonsen of Denmark in the knockout stages, but fell short to Thailand’s 2023 world champion Kunlavut Vitidsarn in the semi-finals, before denying Lakshya Sen of India a bronze.
Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah also showed great resilience to survive the ‘group of death’ with top seeds and eventual champions Chen Qing Chen-Jia Yi Fan of China, Japan’s Mayu Matsumoto-Wakana Nagahara and Apriyani Rahayu-Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti of Indonesia to shock everyone and set history as the country’s first women’s doubles pair to advance to the last four stage.
But defeats to four time world champions Qing Chen-Yi Fan in the semi-finals and Nami Matsuyama-Chiharu Shida ended their medal hopes.
Apart from that, mixed doubles pair Chen Tang Jie-Toh Ee Wei produced stellar performances to win all their group matches, including an upset win over China's world number one Feng Yan Zhe-Huang Dong Ping, but were unable to move past the quarter-finals, going down to South Koreans Kim Won Ho-Jeong Na Eun, who eventually claimed the silver.
Meanwhile, the country’s biggest gold medal hopeful Datuk Mohd Azizulhansni’s last Olympic campaign ended in heartbreaking fashion due to a disqualification after the 2017 keirin world champion overtook the derny (an electric motorbike acting as a pacer) before it left the track in his pet event.
In the absence of the ‘Pocket Rocketman,’ Muhammad Shah Firdaus Sahrom shouldered the hope for Malaysia to advance to the finals, and had a glimpse of winning bronze but Japanese rider Shinji Nakano dashed his hopes by crashing on him just a few meters before the finish line.
Muhammad Shah Firdaus still got back up and pushed his bike to the finishing line to end the race in fourth place but he was relegated to sixth for veering into the path of the Japanese rider before the crash.
Rising women’s rider Nurul Izzah Izzati, 20, displayed promising future for the Los Angeles 2028 (LA28) Games via her performance in the women’s keirin and sprint events, though didn’t progress far.
Weightlifter Mohamad Aniq was on the verge of creating history as the first Malaysian medallist in the sport, but lost the bronze by only one kilogram, despite setting a national record by lifting 297kg (130kg in snatch,167kg in clean & jerk).
Most notably, the diving squad returned empty-handed from the Olympics for the second time in a row after Nur Dhabitah Sabri finished 12th in the women’s 3m springboard while debutant Bertrand Rhodit Lises campaign ended in disappointment, finishing 25th out of 26 participants in the preliminary.
Women’s recurve archery trio Syaqiera, Ariana Nur Dania Mohamad Zairi and Nurul Azreena Mohamad Fazil showed some decent performances despite being eliminated in the early rounds, but they would need a lot of experience and training to compete against the best in the world.
In the men’s 100m dash, sprinter Muhammad Azeem Mohd Fahmi was ousted in the first round after a poor run of 10.45 seconds (s), way below his national record of 10.09s, while swimmers - Khiew Hoe Yean (men’s 400m freestyle) and Tan Rouxin (women’s 100m breaststroke) were eliminated in the heats - and road cyclist Nur Aisyah Mohamad Zubir couldn’t finish her women’s road race event.
Golfers Gavin Green (men’s individual) and Ashley Lau (women’s individual) finished in shared 33rd and 55th places respectively; sailors Khairulnizam Mohd Afendy (ILCA 7) and Nur Shazrin Mohamad Latif (ILCA 6) ended in 32nd and 35th places; while shooter Johnathan Wong misfired to finish 26th in the qualification and missed the boat to the final.
Chfe-de-Mission Datuk Hamidin Mohd Amin said he was pleased with the overall performance of the national contingent, especially the fighting spirit shown to upset higher ranked opponents.
Now that we have to wait for another four years for the next attempt for gold, he said the ground work and planning for the LA28 must start now to ensure mission achieved.
Compared to the previous editions, this time the Youth and Sports Ministry led by Hannah Yeoh had a better objective with a long term RTG programme providing additional support for potential medal contenders for two-Olympics cycle till the LA28.
On top of it, the RTG Fast Track programme was introduced in February to develop promising athletes aged between 16-25 to become medal contenders for LA28, with athletes from squash and diving placed in the programme as of now.
National Sports Council (NSC) director-general Abdul Rashid Yaakub said they will look into adding more athletes to the programme, while also enhancing the Podium Programme introduced in 2016.
“NSC will draft a four-year plan for LA28 and develop new sports like climbing, skateboard and surfing to weigh the potential. We will also focus on sports that offer a large number of medals and sports that have many weight categories,” he said.
-- BERNAMA
