Ruby finishes fifth in SEA Juniors
MIRI: Ruby Lee Jia Lu, the state’s sole representative in the Malaysian contingent, finished her first international long jump event in fifth place at the 2018 Southeast Asian Junior Athletics Championships at Thammasat Sports University of Thailand, Bangkok, which concluded yesterday.
The gold, silver and bronze medals went to Vietnam ( 5.74m), Thailand and Malaysia respectively.
The Riam Road Secondary School ( RRSS) student recorded 5.57m, lower than her personal best of 5.59m achieved at a state’s selection meet held in Kuching recently.
Nevertheless, coach Lim Teck Leong was very pleased with Ruby’s performance.
“She is the only representative from Sarawak and she is from an ordinary Chinese Independent School, not from a sports school.
“Ruby is very bright and well disciplined, very industrious and never missed trainings.
“She has great potential to improve and excel in athletics,” Lim told the Borneo Pos t yesterday.
Meanwhile, Ruby attributed her below-par performance partly to lack of focus and missing her coach’s inspiration.
“My deepest regret was that my coach wasn’t with me in such a big scale meet to guide and prepare me mentally, as such my rhythm in performing the jumps were not as good as I wanted.
“I could have done bet ter otherwise,” Ruby said, adding that she would train harder for future meets.
Malaysia took home six gold, two silver and three bronze medals at the championship.
The medal haul puts Malaysia in third place behind Vietnam with 13 gold medals while Thailand topped the medal tally with 15 gold medals.
Meanwhi l e , RRSS ch i e f executive officer Datuk Dr Fong Onn Min was pleased with Ruby’s effort and hailed coach Lim for his contribution.
He said Ruby is among the eight students from the school that have been selected to represent the state in the forthcoming Malaysian Schools Sports Council ( MSSM) championship.
“Lim, the RRSS deputy athletics head coach from Miri , has professional coaching certificates and he is a Sukma gold medallist in long jump who had represented Malaysia. He has excelled in his career.
“Among his achievements are grooming Ruby and triple jumper Brendon Ting Li King, who created new state records at the recent state’s selection meet in Kuching.
“Brendon broke Lim’s own state record which he created in 1999 during MSSS meet in Sarikei,” said Fong.