KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 20 — The National Sports Council (NSC) has set a preliminary target of 93 gold medals for the Malaysian contingent at the 30th SEA Games to be held in the Philippines in 2019.
Its Athlete’s Division acting director, Jefri Ngadirin said the target was based on medals won by national athletes in previous SEA Games, including Kuala Lumpur SEA Games (KL 2017) last August.
“We started setting early targets since the Kita Juara Programme began in 2015, so that we can know the objectives of the training programme set by national sports associations.
“We will use the same process for the 2019 SEA Games and have identified that between 93-96 gold medals can be won by our athletes based on the sports expected to be contested.
“This would put us in the top three in 2019,” he told reporters after briefing several representatives of national sports associations on the Athletes Preparation Programme for the 2019 SEA Games here, today.
Jefri said that 300 individuals, including 210 athletes who had been chosen in November, would go through a three-phase selection process before they could represent the country in the 2019 SEA Games.
The first phase would be from Feb-Dec 2018, followed by the second phase from Jan-June 2019, before the final list of athletes is announced after the end of the third phase from July-Nov 2019, he explained.
The selection of athletes for 2019 SEA Games would be based on several criteria, such as being a gold or silver medalist in KL 2017, ranked among the top five in the 2014 Commonwealth and Asian Games, and ranked among the top-six in Asia and top-ten in the world.
Malaysia won 145 gold medals in KL2017, the country’s best achievement in the regional games. — Bernama
