KUALA LUMPUR – National diver Datuk Pandelela Rinong Pamg has left the nation shocked after failing to qualify for the Paris Olympics.
Partnering Nur Dhabitah Sabri in the 10m synchronised platform at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha early this morning, the pair could only finish in 12th place.
They needed to finish in the top seven in this final to make it to Paris.
The pair scored a total of 240.06 points, 122.16 points behind the winning pair of Chen Yuxi-Quan Hongchan from China.
Kim Mi-rae and Jo Jin-mi from North Korea won silver and Lois Toulson-Andrea Spendolini Sirieix from Britain completed the podium.
Pandelela is part of the high-performance Road to Gold (RTG) programme. However, with the two-time Olympic medallist not going to Paris, her fate in the RTG is expected to be decided soon.
The requirement for one to qualify as a RTG athlete is either to be an Olympic medallist from previous Games or be in the top 10 in the world in your sport. Pandelela qualified to be in the programme as she was an Olympic medallist.
“In the (Olympic) qualifying process, you have to accept that, in sports, sometimes you will make it and sometimes you will fail,” Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh told the media after officiating the Sime Darby Foundation’s Women and Girls in Sports Forum here yesterday.
Meanwhile, Pandelela made her Olympic debut in the 2008 Beijing Games as a 15-year-old and had qualified for London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.
She became the first female athlete from Malaysia and the first to win an Olympic medal from a sport other than badminton in London, bagging a bronze in the 10m platform.
She followed that up with silver in Rio, partnering Cheong Jun Hoong in the 10m synchronised platform.
Earlier, on Sunday, the Sarawakian diver failed to make it to the semi-finals of the individual 10m platform after finishing 29th out of 46 divers.
However, Nur Dhabitah still has a chance to qualify for Paris when she partners Ng Yan Yee in the 3m synchronised springboard later today.
Nur Dhabitah and Yan Yee will also take part in the preliminary stage of the individual 3m springboard dive tomorrow. – January 7, 2024