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Tuesday June 2, 2009

Asia Cup outing raises hopes of finding another lead rider

By LIM TEIK HUAT

PETALING JAYA: The national back-squad squad brought the curtains down on their first competitive assignment for the year with a silver and a bronze in the Track Cycling Asia Cup at the Kagetsuen Keirin Velodrome in Yokohama yesterday.

The men’s sprint trio of Junaidi Nasir, Mohd Hafiz Sufian and Mohd Harrif Salleh clocked 1:16.712 in the final against Japan, led by 200 sprint gold medallist Shibasaki Atsushi.

The Japanese stamped their class clocking 1:13.788 to claim the gold medal. South Korea beat Iran for the bronze.

The second medal for Malaysia came from the men’s 4km team pursuit. The quartet of Mohd Akmal Amrun, Amir Mustafa Rusli, Mustarudin Zamani and Adiq Husainie Othman posted a time of 4:27.503, which was outside the national record of 4:20.000 but good enough for the bronze behind Kazakhstan and Japan.

Of the two medal-winning efforts, the performance in the team sprint may raise some hope of solving the problem of finding a starter good enough to lessen the dependence on world championships silver medallist Azizul Hasni Awang.

The Malaysian National Cycling Federation (MNCF) deputy president, Datuk Naim Mohamad, said that the problem for the team sprint had always been on finding a good starter lead rider.

“At the moment, Azizul has the qualities of a superb all-rounder. He rode well in the world championships recently with Josiah Ng and Rizal Tisin as the second and anchor riders respectively,” he said.

“It would be better if we can find someone good enough to focus on just being the lead rider to allow Azizul to concentrate on the individual events.

“Junaidi has given us some hope and he is up there with Mohd Edrus Yunus to be considered for this role. We have to give him (Junaidi) more time as he underwent a back surgery last year.”

In the men’s keirin, Hafiz was the only Malaysian to make it to the top six final but he crashed out. The other Malaysian, Harrif, was disqualified for a technical infringement in his first-round heat. The event was won by Japanese Nitta Yudai.

In the 1km time trial, Akmal missed out on a medal in his first competition in the senior ranks when he posted the fourth fastest time of 1:06.754.

World Championships rider Yudai completed the sweep of all the men’s sprint titles for Japan by winning the event in 1:04.954, which was well outside the Asian record of 1:01.658 held by Rizal.

The only Malaysian woman in the fray, Nurul Ahmad Badeuzzaman, finished fourth in the 20km points race.

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