M'sia archers on target with five gold

KUALA LUMPUR: The four gold medals set by the National Archery Association of Malaysia (NAAM) for the archery team was achieved when the archers collected a total of five gold at the 2017 Kuala Lumpur SEA Games (KL2017).
Besides the five gold, the archery team also contributed three silver and two bronze medals and emerged as the overall champion in archery at the event in the 29th edition of the games held at the Synthetic Field of the National Sports Council from Aug 16 to 22.
NAAM president Datuk Seri Johari Baharom said it was the best achievement by the archery squad although the medal tally was the same as the one collected in Singapore two years ago.
"I am satisfied with the success this time as it was the best in the SEA Games. Although the achievement was the same as in Singapore but we had more chances when many archers advanced to the final.
"But there were also occasions when the chances did not favour our archers. Furthermore, it's normal when competing on home ground, the large number of spectators posed more pressure," he told the media when commenting on the performance of the archery squad at KL2017.
Johari hoped the excellent achievement would inspire the national archery team to give its best performance at the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia.
"We will discuss whatever weaknesses that need to be overcome, where training had to be given more focus. I will discuss with the coach and the National Sports Council how to improve Malaysia's performance so that we will have a chance at the Asian Games," he said.
Three of the five gold medals won by the archery team came from the compound squad in the men's team event, women's team and mixed team while the other two gold were contributed by the recurve squad (men's team and women's team events).
The archery squad had broken four national records, thus breaking four championship records.
The records were in the women's individual compound event through Fatin Nurfatehah Mat Salleh, men's individual recurve (Khairul Anuar Mohamad), men's recurve team (Khairul Anuar, Haziq Kamaruddin, Muhd Akmal Nor Hasrin) and recurve mixed team (Khairul Anuar, Nur Aliya Ghapar). — Bernama