PETALING JAYA: Family comes first for para athlete Siti Noor Iasah Mohd Ariffin after her Tokyo stint.
Siti will hang up her spikes by end of this year and will not be defending her women’s 400m T20 title at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games next year.
The 31-year-old has made up her mind to bow out of the Malaysian para athletics scene when her contract with the National Sports Council (NSC) under the Podium Programme ends this year.
“I think that 16 years of involvement in para athletics is enough for me. The Tokyo Paralympics is my last. I want to spend more time with the family,” said Siti.
“It was already hard for me to be apart from my young son for the last few months.
The mother to nine-year-old Nur Iman Qaisara has plans to open her own sports massage centre when she returns to Johor.
Siti reached the women’s 400m T20 final on Tuesday but finished eighth with 1:01.05. She clocked a season best time of 59.89 in the heats on Monday.
Siti admitted that her performance was not her best as she arrived in Tokyo without any competitive results for more than two years.
“My last competition was in Australia in early 2019. I gave my best but it was not easy running in the rain and against younger runners,” she said.
“I’m sorry that I could not fulfil a vow I made to my son as I had promised to run as fast as I could for him,” said Siti, who missed out on a medal by a whisker in her first Paralympics outing in Rio de Janeiro five years ago.
Siti settled for a fourth place in the final in Rio after Poland’s Barbara Niewiedzia dived to throw her head across the finish line.
On her sweetest moment in sports, Siti mentioned the 2018 Jakarta Asian Para Games outing was the high point in her career.
“It was the first gold medal for the Malaysian contingent at the Asian Para Games... I was happy that I lived up to the expectations.”
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