M’sian Open a must for elite track and field athletes

KUALA LUMPUR: All national elite track and field athletes are required to participate in the 95th Malaysian Open Athletics Championship which will be held at the National Stadium, Bukit Jalil from May 11-13.

Malaysian Athletics Federation president Datuk Karim Ibrahim made the announcement after chairing a meeting of the organising committee at Wisma OCM here yesterday. The National Junior Championships will also be held concurrently.

“The championships will be used as the yardstick for selection to the 2018 Asian Games and also the ASEAN Schools Championship.

“All national athletes must take part including those who took part in the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games (GC2018) like discus thrower Muhammad Ifran Shamsuddin, high jumper Nauraj Singh Randhawa and sprinter Khairul Hafiz Jantan,” he said.

So far, 500 entries, including from India, Sri Lanka and Japan, have been received by the organisers even though the closing date is May 1.

On other matters, Karim declined to comment on the performance of the athletics contingent at GC2018 saying MAF and the National Sports Council will be doing a postmortem soon. – Bernama

Failure to show up, Kuantan FA booted out of M-League

KUALA LUMPUR: Kuantan FA will no longer feature in the M-League following being “red carded” by the Malaysian Football League (MFL) over their no show for their Premier League match against Police at the Shah Alam Stadium last Sunday.

MFL chief executive officer Kevin Ramalingam said the decision by the MFL board received the full backing of the FA of Malaysia and was with immediate effect.

“Not showing up for a match without informing the secretariat is a serious offence. It also has to do with costs, borne by MFL, the opposing team and sponsors who have invested millions.

“So the decision to drop them from the M-League is the right one,” he said in a statement here yesterday.

Police were awarded the automatic 3-0 victory due to the no show by Kuantan FA.

With the MFL decision, the Premier League is left with 11 teams for the remainder of the season. – Bernama