AZIZULHASNI Awang lost out in the repechage race which would have seen him into the quarter-finals – but that was exactly what he had wanted.
After losing by a whisker to Holland sprinter Jeffrey Hoogland in the third round of the sprint knockout stage, he decided to conserve his energy in the repechage for a more important race, the keirin.
The 36-year-old’s campaign ended when he lost by 0.037s to Hoogland, the 2020 Tokyo Games silver medallist, and had to go to the repechage. He did not make an all-out push in the repechage at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome in Paris.
“Coach John Beasley told me to save the energy for keirin after that. If I had gone all out to win the repechage, I was going to face Harrie Lavreysen (from Holland) next. He is the fastest out there now and I am not just going to waste my energy as I would probably need to go through three tough races against him.
“It’s better to save my energy, use the next two days to recover and focus on the keirin,” explained Azizul, who will race in the keirin tomorrow with Mohd Shah Firdaus Sahrom.
“It’s just like what happened in the last Olympics, I could have beaten the British cyclist Jason Kenny to reach the quarter-finals but I didn’t want to go to the next round because we would have to race many times and I would have been tired.
“The keirin is where we have a chance for a medal as it’s a race where your physical size does not guarantee you a win but the right strategy can help you,” said Azizul, who has the impressive record of winning the keirin bronze in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and silver in Tokyo three years ago.
Azizul still has the the satisfaction of beating younger rivals in the first two rounds of the knockout stage.
He defeated German Luca Spiegel, 20, and Britain’s Hamish Turnbull, 25, to earn a match-up against towering Dutchman Hoogland, the world record holder in the 1km time trial,
“The plan for me was to take it round by round, so I am happy to have beaten Spiegel and Turnbull to make it to the 1/8 stage.
“My plan was to beat Hoogland to go into the quarter-finals but unfortunately, I lost to him. Tactically I had a perfect race but I just did not have enough speed. He was a lot faster as he was using a bigger gear.”
After that race, it was all about saving his energy for what really matters.
