KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 27 — National track cycling champion Datuk Mohd Azizulhasni Awang has proven he still ‘has fire in his belly’ to create history by presenting Malaysia with its first gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games next year.
It follows the amazing achievement of the 2017 world keirin champion who won the silver medal in the same event at the International Cycling Union (UCI) Track Nations Cup held in Jakarta recently.
Local sports observer Datuk Pekan Ramli admitted that he was very excited and happy when the 35-year-old cyclist achieved this feat less than a year after undergoing open heart surgery in April last year.
What caught Pekan’s attention more was that Mohd Azizulhasni, dubbed The Pocket Rocketman, was able to take on an outstanding much younger rider, Harrie Lavreysen from the Netherlands, who is the 2022 world champion and the gold medal winner of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
“This is a very positive sign because before I had said there were doubts about his (Mohd Azizulhasni’s) performance, but with the success in Jakarta in addition to competing with the world and Olympic champion, it is as if he is back on track.
“If before he won in Australia (Austral Wheelrace in Melbourne in December 2022) without the world champions, this time what has been shown (by him) gives us confidence that he is a gold medal prospect in Paris,” he said when contacted by Bernama, today.
Mohd Azizulhasni, who won the keirin silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and bronze in the same event at the 2016 edition in Rio de Janeiro, had to be satisfied with taking home the silver in Jakarta after being separated by only 0.024 seconds (s) behind Lavreysen in the final last Saturday.
The 2009, 2010, 2017 and 2019/2020 and 2021 Sportsman of the Year was then eliminated in the quarter-finals when competing in the sprint event the next day.
Meanwhile, Pekan thinks Mohd Azizulhasni deserves the same support he got when preparing for Tokyo to face the challenge in Paris.
“I see that he needs greater additional support because I believe that his own internal strength, which is the intrinsic motivation factor, is already very strong. Support needs to come in terms of what can ensure that he achieves an exceptional performance in Paris.
“The additional support is for example in terms of technology, sports science, bicycles, coaches, comprehensive team support and also psychologically,” he said.
Based on the current world rankings, Mohd Azizulhasni occupies 46th position in the keirin event which is his pet event and is in 48th position for the sprint, according to https://dataride.uci.ch/iframe/Rankings/9/.
The development saw Mohd Azizulhasni climb more than 200 and 400 rungs respectively in the keirin and sprint rankings after being ranked 281st and 479th in October last year following a long break after surgery.
A native of Dungun, Terengganu, he was the sole representative of the national cycling squad, which included Muhammad Shah Firdaus Sahrom, Nurul Izzah Izzati Mohd Asri and Anis Amira Rosidi, to bring home a medal from the championship in Jakarta.
— Bernama
