KUANTAN, July 17 (Bernama) -- The 15th Malaysia Games (Sukma), which ended last night, saw an improvement of athletes' performance with three national records and 29 games records broken by national, regional and state second liners.
Pahang, as host of the latest edition of the Sukma, put on an impressive effort when it was described as one of the best ever since its introduction in 1986 in Kuala Lumpur.
The success of the games' host was acknowledged by the National Sports Council (NSC) as the main sports administration body in the country.
NSC director-general Datuk Seri Zolkples Embong said that overall, he was satisfied with the performance of the 1,707 athletes under the second liner programme who represented their respective states.
"Two of the three national records achieved this time were through elite weightlifter Abdul Mubin Rahim in the under 77kg category in the clean and jerk while Freancy Titus made it in the 58kg category snatch event.
"Another national record was rewritten by James Lan Barr in the 200m men's medley with a time of 2:05.82s," he told reporters Tuesday.
Nonetheless, he said only 33 Sukma records were broken by athletes in the latest games compared with 67 records in the Melaka Sukma in 2010.
"The lower number of records was due to the age limit factor when NSC set the maximum age at 21 years for the current meet compared with 23 years in the previous games," he said.
Zolkples said this could be in part due to a large number of the above 21 years athletes having participated in international championship and have achieved national elite athlete status.
He said NSC did not propose to change the age limit considering the objective of Sukma was to unearth new talents for international competition.
"The second factor for the lower championship records broken was due to the fact that many senior athletes have qualified for the London Olympics and were not available to assist their respective states," he said.
Zolkples said elite and national athletes continued their domination of their respective sports but there were several surprises from new athletes such as Nur Amalia Haneeshah Mazlan, 12, from Terengganu's archery team who won the 70m women's recurve to beat more experienced national and state archers.
"In terms of medal collection, junior athletes contributed 105 gold, 107 silver and 87 bronze this time compared with 87 gold, 129 silver and 153 bronze in the Melaka Sukma," he said.
He said the domination of national second liner A. Kavee and others in athletics proved the programme planned by NSC was yielding results and would be stepped up next year.
Terengganu defended its overall games championship title for the fourth time consecutively after winning it in Terengganu (2008), Melaka (2010) and Kuala Lumpur (2011) when it collected 62 gold, 24 silver and 30 bronze medals this time around.
A total of 4,964 athletes representing 15 contingents including Brunei took part in 24 sports which were competed over 11 venues in Kuantan, Temerloh and Pekan.
By Ahmad Muliady Abdul Majid -- BERNAMA
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