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1st September, 2010
KUALA TERENGGANU: The Paris World Badminton Championship which concluded yesterday was a yardstick to gauge the effectiveness of the Malaysian High Performance Sports Training Centre (HPTC) at the University of Bath, United Kingdom as a forward base for national athletes.
Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek said it also gave the ministry the opportunity to monitor its effectiveness and suitability in preparing Malaysian athletes for the 2012 Olympic Games.
He said if the achievement of Koo Kien Keat/Tan Boon Heong in reaching the men’s doubles final was anything to go by, then the HPTC had shown positive results.
“We hope other athletes will also be able to adapt themselves at the centre,” he told reporters after attending a sahur (meals before dawn) with the media here yesterday.
This is the first time a national squad capitalised on the HTPC in Bath since the National Sports Institute and the Malaysian government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the university in March.
Malaysian athletes will be put through their paces in Bath in preparation for the New Delhi Commonwealth Games and the Guangzhou Asian Games in October and November respectively, and the 2012 London Olympic Games.
On Kien Keat and Boon Heong’s performance, Ahmad Shabery said they created history by qualifying for the men’s doubles final although Malaysia had not won the title since the championship started in 1977. The Malaysian pair bowed out to China’s Cai Yun/Fu Haifeng 21-18, 18-21, 14-21.
Unfortunately, the world’s number one player Datuk Lee Chong Wei’s campaign fizzled out in the quarter-final when he was beaten by Indonesia’s Taufik Hidayat 15-21, 21-11, 12-21.
On a claim that back injury was the reason behind Chong Wei’s exit, Ahmad Shabery said he would check whether the shuttler would be ready for the next international tournament.
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