TOKYO: While others around them continued to flounder, it was left to national men\u2019s singles shuttler Lee Zii Jia, woman sailor Nur Shazrin Mohamad Latif and swimmer Phee Jinq En to save the day for Malaysia on Day Three of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Zii Jia\u2019s smashing performance on his Olympic debut was like a breath of fresh air to the badminton camp after the women\u2019s doubles and mixed doubles pairs fell to their second straight defeat in their respective groups.
\nThe 23-year-old Zii Jia was simply sublime as he brushed aside Ukraine\u2019s\u00a0Artem Pochtarov\u00a021-5, 21-11 in just 25 minutes in their opening Group M match at the\u00a0Musashino Forest Sport Plaza here.
\nHowever, the reigning All England champion can expect a tougher time on Wednesday (July 28) when he takes on Frenchman Brice Leverdez.
\nMeanwhile, hopes of mixed doubles pair Chan Peng Soon-Goh Liu Ying delivering a medal at the Tokyo Games were dashed after they fell again in Group D.
\nThe pair, who won the silver medal at the 2016 Rio Games, took to the court\u00a0knowing they had to beat Germans Mark Lamfuss-Isabel Herttrich, but nothing seemed to work\u00a0for the Malaysians as they fell 12-21, 15-21.
\nPeng Soon-Liu Ying will complete their Group D campaign against\u00a0world number two Wang Yilyu-Huang Dongping of China\u00a0today (July 26).
\nIt was also the end of the road for national women\u2019s doubles pair\u00a0Chow Mei Kuan-Lee Meng Yean after they succumbed to their second straight loss in Group A yesterday.
\nMei Kuan-Meng Yean, who went down fighting\u00a021-17, 15-21, 8-21 to world number one\u00a0Sayaka Hirota-Yuki Fukushima of Japan, will face Great Britain\u2019s Chloe Birch-Lauren Smith in their final group match.
\nSailor Nur Shazrin, meanwhile, performed admirably in the first two races of the women\u2019s Laser Radial event at the\u00a0Enoshima Yacht Harbour in Fujisawa, near here.
\nAfter two races, the\u00a02018 Asian Games bronze medallist, finds herself in 11th spot out of 44 sailors with eight more races to go, including two on Monday (July 26).
\nIn the men\u2019s Laser Standard event,\u00a0Khairulnizam Mohd Afendy is 26th out of 35 sailors after Race One. There are still nine more races to go after today\u2019s Race Two had to be postponed to Monday (July 26) due to wind conditions.
\nIt was a bittersweet moment for national swimmers\u00a0Jinq En and Welson Sim Wee Sheng at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
\nJinq En can give herself a pat on the back after finishing second in Heat Two of the women\u2019s 100-metre (m) breaststroke event in\u00a01:08.40 seconds (s), which also happens to be a new national record – eclipsing her own previous mark of\u00a01:08.50s that she clocked en route to bagging the gold medal at the 2019 SEA Games in Manila, the Philippines.
\nSadly, her time was still not fast enough for her to be placed among the top 16 swimmers to advance to the semi-finals, which will be held on Monday (July 26).
\nThe 23-year-old Jinq En ended up 29th out of 43 competitors in the overall ranking.
\nWelson, meanwhile, managed to\u00a0set his own season\u2019s best in the men\u2019s 200m freestyle qualifying round despite making an early exit from the Tokyo Olympics.
\nHe clocked 1:49.24s to finish seventh in today\u2019s Heat Two, which was won by Romanian David Popovici (1:45.32s). Serbia\u2019s Velimir Stjepanovic (1:46.26s) was second and Germany\u2019s Jacob Heidtmann (1:46.73s) third.
\nThe 24-year-old Sarawakian finished 32nd out of 39 swimmers in the overall ranking.
\nNational artistic gymnastics queen Farah Ann Abdul Hadi also failed to shine in the individual all-around women\u2019s qualifying round when she ended the day in 68th spot out of 85 participants at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre here.
\nThe 27-year-old from Selangor could only score a total of 48.565 points after completing all four compulsory routines – uneven bars (11.600 pts), balance beam (11.566 pts), floor exercise (12.233 pts) and vault (13.166 pts).
\nMeanwhile, apart from the two sailors, the other Malaysians who will be in action on Monday (July 26) are men\u2019s doubles shuttlers\u00a0Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik, who will be up against world number two\u00a0Mohammad Ahsan-Hendra Setiawan of Indonesia.
\n— BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TOKYO: While others around them continued to flounder, it was left to national men\u2019s singles shuttler Lee Zii Jia, woman sailor Nur Shazrin Mohamad Latif and swimmer Phee Jinq En to save the day for Malaysia on Day Three of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on Sunday. Zii Jia\u2019s smashing performance on his Olympic debut was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":5426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports-tech"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5427,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions\/5427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}