No M’sian close to Rajkumar’s 32-year-old 800m record
KUALA LUMPUR: National record holder in the 800- metre run, B Rajkumar feels there is no Malaysian athlete at the moment who can break his record created at the Asian Athletics Championships 1985 in Indonesia.
Rajkumar said from his own observat ion, no Malaysian athlete had reached the level where the person could equal his achievement of winning two gold medals, namely in the 800m and 1,500m, at the 1983 SEA Games in Singapore.
“Honestly, I think currently, no one can break my time of 1 minute and 47.37 seconds in the 800m.
“My hope is for a national athlete to break this 32-year- old record and I will be the happiest to see this achieved,” he told reporters after the launching of the ‘ Merdeka Kuala Kubu 21km Road Relay 2017’, here on Monday.
Rajkumar said it was not easy to run the fastest time as he himself had to train in Germany for three years before he could achieve that feat.
“For the 800m event, most athletes aim for the gold medal without considering the time recorded, perhaps because it’s difficult to create a new record in this middle- distance run.
“Also, our current national athletes have not shone at the international level in this event, hence we can more or less predict how it will be at the upcoming SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rajkumar who is ‘ambassador’ for the ‘ Merdeka Kuala Kubu 21km Road Relay’ for two years in a row now, targets 120 teams to participate in this event scheduled for Sept 2 at the Hulu Selangor District Council Mini Stadium.
“This relay event is aimed at being an early platform for the young to hone their athletics talent and to encourage school students to be interested in the middle- distance run,” he said.
There will be six categories in the run including the men and women’s open and boys and girls and each team will have four participants. — Bernama