At least one Sabahan on national skating team promise By Shalina R.
SEPANGGAR: Ice Skating Association Malaysia president Mohamad Fadzli Johan promised to turn at least one of Sabah’s natural sprinters into one of Malaysia’s ice speed skaters for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
“That is our promise. Last year and this year was a magnificent achievement for Malaysia and we qualified for the Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, (Korea),” said Fadzli at the grand opening of the eSpace Entertainment Arena in Grand Merdeka Mall at Bandar Sierra here yesterday.
“Our next target is to qualify for the Winter Olympic Games 2022 in Beijing. We will make it happen and we will make sure that we have one from Sabah to be in the national team.
“We have to work very, very hard because the temperature in Beijing for the next 12 years will be -15 (degrees celcius). It’s ice, it’s not hot. But with a lot of teamwork, a lot of understanding and on behalf of the Ice Skating Association Malaysia, with the Ministry of Sports Malaysia and new government of Sabah, I think we can make it happen. I hope we will learn together and I think it will be a surprise for Sabahans,” he added.
Fadzli said there are easily 200 to 300 Sabahan social ice skaters in Kuala Lumpur that can be molded and steered towards the right path of skating.
He added, with the grand launch of the eSpace Entertainment Arena and its synthetic ice skating rink, many Sabahans have their first platform to develop winter sports in the state.
“Sabahans are famous for having a lot of sprinters with the body and build that are very good and they are very fast. We will try to change that and put that on ice. I believe that we will have opportunity and the prospect of Sabahans to be in the (national ice skating) team because they are fit, their body build is very nice, so physically they are very good,” said Fadzli.
“We just put the technical aspect into it. It’s an open market for Malaysia and I will try my best to get Sabah to be in the team and make sure that the sport will grow in Sabah.
“We try our best to put the sport into one of the cocurriculum activities in school. We will do it in Malaysia and we’ll move to Sabah to make it happen. So the opportunity is open and hopefully we will make it happen in Sabah,” he added.
Fadzli said a recent ice skating workshop held on June 23 had received good response from Sabahans at the eSpace synthetic ice skating rink.
“Skating is not hard, skating is not expensive. They have the exposure here and then we will try to arrange something for them to come to Kuala Lumpur because the real ice is in Kuala Lumpur now,” said Fadzli, who was referring to the future selected national ice skaters from Sabah.
According to Grand Merdeka (GM) Development Sdn Bhd executive director Chew Sang Hai, the 3,000 square feet synthetic ice skating rink takes up almost half of the 7,000 square feet area of the eSpace Entertainment Arena.
“We believe that this idea can bring a new, fresh and most importantly affordable ice skating arena for family, children and corporate companies to have team building activities,” he said.
“This synthetic ice skating rink has been in operation for two weeks and we observe that people around GM Mall area are supportive and excited to play at our synthetic ice skating rink.
“Apart from that, we have also planned to integrate school extra curriculum activities with eSpace sports/games such as providing ice skating rink to be the official extra curriculum skating rink for schools. We plan to organize workshops for school students and also sponsor a few students from schools or institutions to be trained by qualified trainers,” he added.
National ice skating brothers Mohamad Ariff Rasydan Mohamad Fadzli, 19, and Muhammad Ameer Iman Mohamad Fadzli, 16, GM Development general manager Emily Chew, Kay Yi Chan from Instant Exhibition, Isaac Toh from Escapee Kota Kinabalu, and GM Asset Sdn Bhd (Entertainment Area) manager Jur Rahmi Jabir were also present during the grand launch.
eSpace also consists of Family Karaoke Centre.