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KUALA LUMPUR − The national exponents’ success in bagging five gold medals at the recent Southeast Asian Karate Federation (SEAKF) Championships is no guarantee they will have it easy at the Hanoi SEA Games in Vietnam from May 12-23.
Although satisfied with their achievement, national karate coach R. Puvaneswaran said the SEAKF Championships could not be used as a yardstick because the biennial Games would provide a different level of intensity.
“They are both different in terms of emotion, tournament pressure… and judging will also be very different.
“But we gave our best at the (SEAKF) Championships and it will provide a little motivation to all the athletes, who will be in action, at the SEA Games,” he told a media conference by the Malaysian contingent to Hanoi at the National Sports Council in Bukit Jalil today.
Apart from the five gold medals, Malaysia also captured three silvers and four bronzes at the SEAKF Championships held in Cambodia last month.
Puvaneswaran, who does not want his charges to be contented with their success in Cambodia, has urged them to continue to take their performance level up another notch.
The former national karate ace, who won two gold medals in the Asian Games, said that with about 30 days to go before the start of the SEA Games, the national exponents would focus on improving their skills and tactics.
Meanwhile, national karate squad manager Mohd Razlan Shah Mohd Rabli said Malaysia is targeting three gold medals from kumite in Hanoi.
“We are targeting three golds because previously, there were many categories contested compared to now. For example, the men’s category has only one team and four individual events while the women’s section has six in total,” he said.
Razlan, meanwhile, said the full list of exponents to the SEA Games would be finalised soon as the evaluation process to pick only those eligible was still ongoing.
For the record, the national karate squad bagged four gold medals at the 2019 SEA Games in the Philippines and three of them came from the kumite events. – Bernama, April 6, 2022