Chong Wei expresses gratitude to Malaysians

SEPANG: Olympic silver medallist Datuk Lee Chong Wei today extended his heartfelt gratitude to Malaysians for their undying support to the country's Rio Olympic contingent.
Lee, who was disappointed he was unable to land the country's first ever gold medal, said he and the other athletes received tonnes of encouraging messages on Facebook despite not breaking the country's duck in gold medal.
"I want to thank all of you. Maybe I have lost the final, but there were many of you Malaysians who sent me Facebook messages.
"Some event sang Negaraku and posted on Facebook. For this I am very happy, that even when we lose, the fans still encourage us.
"This is a motivation to the athletes," he told a press conference soon after arriving from Rio, along with the other medal winners, here, today.
Lee said he still has enough left in him to compete and try and win next year's Glasgow's Badminton World Championship, of which he had also never came out on top before.
Pandelela Rinong, who also won a silver medal in the women's synchronised 10m platform diving along with Cheong Jun Hoong, said she had not expected that their return back home would be greeted in such a carnival-like atmosphere.
"Unexpected and surreal. Very happy to get such a homecoming," she said.
Meanwhile, Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin lauded the national athletes who won the country five medals in total, including four silvers, making it the country best ever haul of medals in the Olympics.
He said the five medals also put Malaysia just second to Thailand in the Asean region as the country with highest medal tally in Rio, Brazil.
"I'm proud because we managed to get five medals, number two just behind Thailand with six. In that sense, it was a really good representation of medals.
"And when you talk about gold medal, we were so, so close. But in terms of number of medals, we couldn't have asked more," he said.