KUALA LUMPUR: Olympian Traisy Vivien Tukiet has been dropped from the national diving squad for the Myanmar SEA Games in December.
The 19-year-old, who won the gold in the women’s platform synchro with fellow Sarawakian Pandelela Rinong at the 2011 Indonesia SEA Games, paid the price for her poor showing in July’s World Championships in Barcelona
Instead, the Amateur Swimming Union of Malaysia (Asum) have named juniors Loh Zhiayi and Nur Dhabitah Sabri for the Games.
The 16-year-old Zhiayi was a silver medallist in the platform event at the Asian Youth Games in Nanjing last month while Dhabitah, only 14, delivered several gold medals at the South-East Asian aquatics championships in Singapore last year.
For the Myanmar Games, each country is only allowed to enter a maximum of 12 divers – six men and six women.
Asum secretary Edwin Chong said they had initially wanted to send a bigger squad with more representation from the juniors.
“The SEA Games is the best stage to expose the juniors. But we cannot do that this time with the hosts imposing such a regulation.
“So, we will have our best squad going to Myanmar with Pandelela, Leong Mun Yee, Cheong Jun Hoong and Wendy Ng Yan Yee all in the list.
“We are including Dhabitah and Zhiayi as we want them to get ready for the next Olympic cycle,” said Edwin.
As for the men’s squad, the retirements of Olympian Yeoh Ken Nee, Bryan Nickson Lomas and Huang Qiang have left Asum with no choice but to include the likes of Ooi Tze Liang, Muhd Amsyar Azman, Chew Yi Wei, Danial Sabri and Muhd Nazreen Abdullah for the Games.
Daniel, Nazreen, Zhiayi and Dhabitah will compete in the Asian Diving Cup in Singapore this weekend.
For the record, Malaysia bagged seven out of the eight golds at the last SEA Games in Indonesia.
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