Malaysia concludes Asiad with 10th place in triathlon

PALEMBANG: National triathlon squad, Ryan Tan Qai Shen, Aldrian Yu Yong Yeo, Irene Chong See Win and Teoh Sue Ling only managed to finish their 2018 Asian Games mixed team relay event at the 10th position at the Jakabaring Sports City (JSC) here, on the final day of the Games today.
The Malaysians clocked one hour, 46 minutes and 59 seconds in the endurance race, about 16:20s behind the gold medal winning Japanese side of Yuka Sato, Jumpei Furuya, Yuko Takahashi and Yuichi Hosoda, who completed the race in 1:30:39s.
In the race participated by 13 countries, each athlete has to complete a 300-metre (m) of swimming, which started at 7.30am local time (8.30 am Malaysian time), followed by 6.3km cycling and 2.1km running.
South Koreans, Jang Yun-jung, Kim Ji-hwan, Park Ye-jin and Heo Min-ho claimed the silver with 1:32:51s, while the bronze medal was won by Bailee Brown, Leong Tim Law, Choi Yan Yin and Wong Tsz-to of Hong Kong (1:33:04s).
"As soon as the race started, I did not look back and I tried to chase the other contestants in front of me like crazy as I wanted to close up the gap," Irene told Bernama after the race.
Meanwhile Aldrian said the race helped the team to identify where they stood against their regional rivals and so that weakness could be improved.
"I think we have lots of work to do after this and we need to train harder but as a team, we did well. Everyone was tired coming from the individual events held over the last two days.
"We saw that other countries like Taiwan has grown very fast in triathlon and I think we need to have a good structure of development in order to catch up with other Asian nations," he said.
For the record, Irene and Teoh finished 12th and 16th in the women's triathlon competition on Friday, while Ryan Tan and Aldrian in the 21st and 23rd position in the men's triathlon held yesterday.
The triathlon was the last event contested in the 2018 Asian Games Jakarta-Palembang, with the closing ceremony to be held in Jakarta, tonight.
After an intensive 15 days of competitions, Malaysia ranked 14th in the overall standing after claiming seven gold, 13 silver and 16 bronze medals. — Bernama