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Posted by Sha
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Filed under Announcements, Press Release
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Press Release Extract
Singapore. July 25, 2010: With just 20 days to go before Singapore’s top young athletes compete in the inaugural Youth Olympic Games on home soil, the Singapore Athletic Association (SAA) today held its final track and field event before YOG begins. The SAA 5th Allcomers Meet 2010 was contested at the ITE College East Campus with athletes from Malaysia and Singapore competing alongside.
Quotes from today’s competition:
Mr Tang Weng Fei, SAA President: “2010 is a very important year for athletics in Singapore with the inaugural Youth Olympic Games taking place here next month. Over the past month, we have witnessed some outstanding results from Singaporean athletes, including Valerie Pereira’s 24.86 sec time in the 200m – making her the first Singapore woman in over 26 years to breach the 25 second barrier – and middle distance runner Zachary Devaraj who recently set two new schools national records in the 800m and 1500m. We also saw T. Piriyah break the national record for the women’s 400m hurdles when she finished in a time of 1 minute 1.69 seconds at the Asian Junior Athletics Championship in Hanoi earlier this month. At today’s meet we witnessed excellent performances from Jamal Md Amirudin and Mustapa Md Elfi in the Men’s 100m.These are exciting times for Singapore athletics”.
Melvin Tan, Coach to sprinter Valerie Pereira and to the Singapore Men’s 4×100 Relay Team: “Meets like the one today at ITE College East give our athletes the opportunity to evaluate their performance against others and to continually improve. In Singapore, we are seeing a growing number of quality track and field events taking place – which is clearly good for athlete improvement. This, combined with the fact that as a country we now have more knowledge and awareness about sports science than ever before, bodes well for the continued development of our Singaporean athletes. We had good results today in the Men’s 100m with Jamal Md Amirudin running 10.53s and Mustapa Md Elfi finishing in 10.56s”.
Dr Leong Lee San, Chairman, SAA Race Walking Sub-Committee: “The Allcomer’s Meet today featured a Women’s 3000m and Men’s 5000m Race Walk. The SAA is placing a major focus on race walking and encouraging more youngsters to take up the sport. Our plan includes running clinics and workshops for race walkers, as well as setting up a training base that will include a gym, physio, trainers and other resources. Experienced race walkers, such as Komathi Jayaraman who today won the Women’s 3000m race walk, and Kowsula Kour who finished 4th, are also key to the development of young talent in the sport. Komathi and Kowsula are great race walking ambassadors and take time to mentor and support those who are just starting out – such as 14 year old Sinchita Sathish who competed today finishing 3rd”.
Azmi Ibrahim, Sprints Coach, Under 23 Malaysia Junior Squad “We brought a squad down from Malaysia today to compete and to put our athletes to the test against our neighbouring Singaporeans. I encourage our junior squad to compete in as many meets as they can as this is the only way that they will improve upon their personnel bests”.
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25th Jul 2010
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