Datuk Dr Ramlan Abd Aziz
KUALA LUMPUR, March 20 (Bernama) -- In a bid to achieve Malaysia's first Olympic gold medal, the National Sports Institute (ISN) has formed a dedicated support team, comprising 37 sports science specialist for the five sports under the Road To London 2012 programme.
ISN Director-General Datuk Dr Ramlan Abd Aziz said the specialists would be responsible for overseeing the needs of athletes and coaches from the respective sports.
"The dedicated team had earlier comprised 51 specialists for seven sports under the Road to London 2012 programme, a programme aimed to win Malaysia's first gold medal in the Olympics," he told Bernama, here, recently.
Seven sports were listed under the Road To London 2012 programme, namely badminton, cycling, archery, diving, shooting, football and hockey.
Football and hockey however, failed to qualify for the London Games.
The four sports that had qualified to London are cycling, archery, diving and shooting while the shuttlers still have until May to qualify.
For badminton, 13 specialists have been allocated due to the large pool of shuttlers frequently competing in overseas tournament.
Six specialist were allocated for cycling and archery respectively, while diving has five and shooting, seven.
Dr Ramlan said the team consisted of specialists in conditioning, psychology, bio-mechanics, match analysis, dietician and technical support.
He however, said that the number of sports science specialists to be taken along with the Malaysian contingent for the Olympic Games in London would depend on the number of national athletes eligible to contest in their respective events.
He said the ISN would also set-up a performance support centre outside the Olympics Games Village to cater for the needs of athletes.
"ISN has plans to place four specialist in the Games Village while another eight at the performance support centre," he said.
By Zulhilmi Supaat -- BERNAMA
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