Diving disaster
National divers left in lurch after thunderstorm damaged training ‘home’
PETALING JAYA: It’s certainly not a good year for Malaysian diving this year.
The dry gymnasium training centre at the National Aquatic Centre in Bukit Jalil has been closed after it suffered extensive structural damage on Thursday.
Kuala Lumpur was hit by strong winds and heavy rain on Thursday evening and some of the sports facilities in Bukit Jalil were affected by the subsequent storm.
Many trees were also uprooted in the storm.
Malaysian Swimming Federation secretary Andy Low said the misfortune hit after 6pm on Thursday.
“It caused a lot of damage to the dry gymnasium as most of the sidewall were ripped apart and all the mattresses were soaked wet,” he said.
“The dry gym cannot be used at the moment. It will take time and money to clean up the mess and do repairs.
“The national divers will use the dry gym at the Kuala Lumpur swimming pool in Cheras first.
“We have informed the National Sports Council (NSC) officials about this and they are aware of the damage.
“These things are out of our hands,” said Andy.
Woman diver Wendy Ng Yan Yee was relieved nothing untoward had happened.
“The dry gym is where we practice our routines before we get into our training pool. Luckily, nobody was around at that time as we had already moved to the pool,” she said.
The Malaysian divers had a miserable year on the international front at the start of the year when none of them managed to qualify for Paris Olympics at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar.
No divers managed to reach the top 18 semi-finals in the respective individual events in the world meet in February.
Malaysia thus will not be represented by any woman diver for the first time in 24 years at the Olympics.
Bertrand Rhodict will be the only diver competing in Paris in the men’s 10m platform individual.
The Sarawak-born diver made the cut through the 2023 edition of the world meet in Fukuoka, Japan.