Malaysian National Athletics Squad To Finally Test Competition Readiness At Saturday Trials

By Vikneswaran Raman KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 4 (Bernama) -- The national athletics squad’s performance and competition readiness will be put to test for the first time since the Movement Control Order was enforced in March when they take part in the national trials here on Saturday. Some 48 athletes who had been undergoing training since July at the National Sports Council (NSC) and the Paralympics Excellence Centre, including while in quarantine recently, will be participating in the trials. National athletics head coach Mohd Manshahar Abdul Jalil said the trials held at the NSC will ensure his charges remained focus and motivated, besides keeping their momentum after being unable to participate in international and domestic meets due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “This trials will be more about basic training and evaluating the athletes' momentum for us to prepare the next training program. We have not set any goals, for example breaking records and so on, we just want to assess the level they are at now. “The trial is done by way of 'underdistance', which means for the 100m sprinters, they will only race for 60m, 300m (for the 400m event) and a maximum of 1,000m for events further than that. All field events will also be held except pole vault due to constraints on the part of the athletes, ” he told Bernama. The Malaysian Athletics Federation (MAF) had initially planned to organise a ‘National Under Distance Trials’ closed championships meet this Saturday, but had to forgo that idea after the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) enforced in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya was extended to Nov 9 due to a rise in COVID-19 cases. Mohd Manshahar said no outsiders were allowed to enter the NSC grounds during the trials, with the coaches themselves acting as judges because they did not want to take a risk of inviting technical officers from outside the NSC. He also hoped the Malaysian Open, scheduled for Dec 11-13 in Bukit Jalil, will proceed as planned as the qualifying period for the Tokyo Olympics that was put on hold will resume on Dec 1. “We are really hoping the Malaysian Open will proceed, but this will all depend on the COVID-19 situation then,” he said. -- BERNAMA