Month: August 2008

Now at the recently concluded Olympics in Beijing, Malaysia excel in badminton, cycling and archery. Datuk Zolkeples Embong, the Director General of National Sports Council mention about changing our concentration in sports that we can excel at world level. So that means cycling, archery and badminton will be given special attention under the development program.

In the same assembly for National Sports Council staff, participants were told that the Malaysian did better than the previous participation in the Olympics. Eventhough the best medal collection in the Olympics was in Atlanta where Malaysia bagged a Silver and a Bronze but in term of performance, Malaysia did better in Beijing.

Malaysian performance in Beijing is as reported by BERNAMA below:

Performance Of Malaysian Athletes At Beijing 29th Olympiad

By Tham Choy Lin

BEIJING, Aug 23 (Bernama) — Malaysia wrapped up their Beijing Olympic Games outing with one silver medal from shuttler Lee Chong Wei and six national records broken in cycling, archery, weightlifting and swimming.

The silver raises Malaysia’s overall tally in Olympics history to two silver and two bronze medals.

Thirty three athletes represented the country in nine disciplines — archery, badminton, cycling, aquatics, sailing, shooting, track and field, taekwondo and weightlifting.

Malaysia first took part in the Olympics in 1956 in Melbourne and have taken part in every Games since then except for the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

ARCHERY:

Men’s Team: Trio Cheng Chu Sian, Muhd Marbawi Sulaiman and Wan Khalmizam Abd Aziz made history by qualifying for the men’s quarterfinals, and ranked as third seeds, but was beaten by 218-213 by eventual silver medalist, Italy.

(Note: The team set a national record of 1,993 and Wan Khalmizam set national record of 674 for 72 arrows, both during the qualifying round).

Men’s Individual: Cheng Chu Sian beat Mathew Gray of Australia in the first round and next upset Olympic record holder Lee Chang Hwan in a two arrow shoot-off to become first Malaysian to enter quarterfinals where he was beaten 109-104 by eventual bronze medallist Bair Badenov of Russia.

Wan Khalmizam and Muhd Marbawi both lost by a point and beaten in first round.

BADMINTON:

Men’s singles: Lee Chong Wei is the first Malaysian to qualify for the final and was beaten by Lin Dan of China 21-12, 21-8.

Wong Choong Hann beat Athens gold medallist Taufik Hidayat in the first round en route to the third round where he was beaten by Hsieh Yu Hsing of Taiwan 21-14 21-17, 21-18.

Men’s doubles: Koo Kien Keat-Tan Boon Heong beaten by Markis Kido-Hendra Setiawan of Indonesia 21-16,21-18 in quarterfinals.

Choong Tan Fook-Lee Wan Wah beaten by Lee Jaejin-Hwang Jiman of South Korea 20-22, 21-13, 21-16 in pre-quarterfinals round.

Women’s singles: Wong Mew Choo is the first Malaysian woman shuttler to make it into the quarterfinals and was beaten by Lu Lan of China 21-7, 27-29.

Women’s doubles: Chin Ee Hui-Wong Pei Tty beaten by Lee Hyojung-Lee Kyungwon of South Korea 21-14, 21-19 in pre-quarterfinal round.

CYCLING:

Team: Trio of Azizulhasni Awang, Josiah Ng and Rizal Tisin was seventh fastest in the qualifying round in national record of 44.725s but was beaten by France in the first round.

Individual: Josiah Ng and Azizulhasni Awang placed 9th, and 10th in keirin event. Azizulhasni finished 8th in the men’s sprint, beaten in quarterfinals by world champion Chris Hoy of Great Britain.

DIVING:

Leong Mun Yee and Elizabeth Jimie finished joint 21st out of 30 contestants in the women’s 3m springboard preliminary with 253.50s pts.

Pandelela Rinong finished 27th out of 29 contestants in the women’s 10m platform with 249.20pts.

Bryan Nickson Lomas finished 26th out of 20 contests in the men’s 10m plaftform with 384.45pts.

SHOOTING:

Hasli Izwan Amir Hasan finished 15th out of 18 with score of 564 (national record 581), and did not qualify for final.

SWIMMING:

Daniel Bego placed 54th in 100m butterfly in 54.38s (national record 54.33s); 44th in 200m freestyle in national record of 1:50.92; 37th in 200m butterfly 2:01.28s (national record 1:59.40s).

Leung Chii Lin placed 48th in 50m freestyle in 26.75s (national record 26.18s).

Khoo Chai Lin placed 38th in 400m freestyle in 4:23.37s (national record 4:17.86s); 34th in 800m freestyle in 9:04.86s (national record 8:47.80s).

Siow Yi Ting placed 19th in 200m breastroke in national record of 2:27.80s; 29th in 200m individual medley in 2:17.11 (national record 2:16.92s).

Lew Yih Wey placed 34th in 400m individual medley in 4:55.83s (national record 4:50.52s).

TRACK AND FIELD:

Roslinda Samsu placed joint 16th with 4.30m in women’s pole vault, did not qualify for final.

Lee Hup Wei placed 32nd with 2.20m in men’s high jump, did not qualify for final. Yuan Yu Fang did not finish women’s 20km walk.

TAEKWONDO:

Elaine Teo was beaten 7-4 in first round of the women’s below 57kg class by eventual silver medallist Azize Tanrikulu of Turkey. Beaten 3-0 in repechage by eventual bronze medallist Diana Lopez of the United States.

Che Chew Chan beat Evgeniya Karimova of Uzbekistan 5-4 in the women’s above 67kg first round to become the first Malaysian exponent to enter the Olympics quarterfinals but was beaten by Nina Solheim of Norway 3-1. Che was beaten 5-1 in bronze repechage by Egypt’s Noha Abd Rabo.

WEIGHLIFTING:

Amirul Hamizam Ibrahim placed 8th in 56kg category with a national record of 265kg.

SAILING:

Kevin Lim finished 38th out of 43 in the men’s laser event.

— BERNAMA

Sememangnya penghargaan ini adalah wajar kerana usaha mereka menaikkan nama dan imej negeri jepalang padi itu dalam arena bolasepak negara.