HANOI: Malaysia hit their five-gold target in track and field at the Hanoi Sea Games today. And it was reached two days before the end of the athletics competition.
Malaysia collected two gold today through discus thrower Irfan Shamsuddin and triple jumper Andre Anura Anuar at the My Dinh National Stadium.
Irfan produced a throw of 58.26m to comfortably take the gold ahead of Thailand's Kiadpradid Srisai (51.18m) and the Philippines' William Morrison III Edward (50.44m).
It is the fifth time in a row that Irfan, 26, has won the discus gold at the Sea Games after previous victories at Myanmar 2013, Singapore 2015, Kuala Lumpur 2017 and Manila 2019.
However, Irfan's effort today was way off his national record of 62.55m, which was set in 2017.
"I am grateful to win this event for the fifth time though I am a little disappointed not to meet the target I had set with my coach.
"I had been hoping to exceed 60m because I had consistently achieved it in in training but I was unable to do it today. Perhaps I wanted it too much and the opposite happened.
"I will continue to work hard to defend my gold at the Cambodia Sea Games next year," said Irfan.
Andre, who finished fifth in the long jump earlier this week, finally took first place today in the triple jump with a personal best of 16.51m. This also kept the triple jump gold – won by Hakimi Ismail at the 2019 Manila Sea Games – in Malaysian hands.
Philippines' Mark Aloto (15.87m) claimed the silver while Vietnam's Tran Van Dien (15.84m) completed the podium.
Andre said he was happy to make up for his disappointing performance in the long jump.
"We had also targeted the long jump gold but it did not materialise," he added.
In other events today, Norliyana Kamaruddin finished third in the heptathlon on 5,262 behind Vietnam's Nguyen Nga Linh (5,415) and the Philippines' Sarah Noveno (5,381).
Queenie Ting, who won a silver in the women's discus earlier, had to settle for fifth spot in the shot put with a 11.63m clearance.