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Wednesday May 13, 2009

Malaysia may have two teams for UCI Track World Cup

By LIM TEIK HUAT

PETALING JAYA: If all goes well, Malaysia will have two teams competing in the new season of the UCI Track World Cup.

The plan to set up a double assault in the championships is not just to raise the standard of Malaysian track cycling but also to pave the way for more cyclists to earn qualification for the World Championships in Denmark next year.

A joint working committee meeting was held on Monday for coach John Beasley to present the proposed new structure to the National Sports Council (NSC) before he returns to Melbourne with the cyclists.

The Malaysian National Cycling Federation (MNCF) deputy president, Datuk Naim Mohamad, said that the NSC had agreed in principle to support plans to let the elite back-up cyclists to compete in the World Cup season beginning in October.

Well supported: Azizul hasni Awang can now enjoy the sponsorship of Nike.

Manchester will stage the first leg followed by stops in Melbourne (November), Cali (December) and Beijing (January).

For a start, Naim revealed that Nike had agreed to sponsor World Championships silver medallist Azizul Hasni Awang in addition to seasoned campaigner Josiah Ng.

“We hope to get them to come in to sponsor the other elite cyclists (Rizal Tisin, Mohd Edrus Yunus and Fatehah Mustafa) to ride under a professional trade team banner. This will enable us to field a separate Malaysian national team in the World Cup,” he said.

Cyclists can only qualify for the World Championships with results in the World Cup.

“If we can ensure that Malaysia are represented in all the legs, the chances are better for more of our cyclists to qualify. We hope to get up to five qualifiers for the sprint events next year,” said Naim.

Having representation in at least three of the four legs would ensure that those who make the grade would not be rejected.

Fatehah and Edrus also qualified for the world championships in Poland last month. But they had to give up their places as Malaysia can have only a maximum of three cyclists (Azizul, Josiah and Rizal) because they only competed in two of the five legs in the 2008-09 season.

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