Despite failing to achieve the two-gold medal target set by the Malaysian National Silat Federation (PESAKA) at the recent Asian Pencak Silat Championships in Singapore, the national silat exponents are in promising form for the year ahead.
Malaysia collected one gold, three silver and five bronze medals from the 10 events they contested to finish fourth behind Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore.
PESAKA coordinator Osman Nok said although the performance in Singapore was not spectacular, it nevertheless was a good showing from a squad returning only recently to training after a two-month break.
"Considering our exponents have only been in training for less than a month, the fact that they were able to win nine medals from the 10 events we competed in is quite a good result," said Osman.
"It was by no means an easy tournament as all the strong teams such as Indonesia and Vietnam were there, and they were already in peak form as their training programmes had started in early January.
"We were lacking sharpness and physical endurance which prevented us from winning more gold medals, but we will continue to improve as the year progresses."
Osman added that the squad should be more competitive in their next championships -- the Belgium Pencak Silat Open on May 5-12. They will head to Indonesia and Thailand in June and August for two-week training stints in the lead-up to the Palembang Sea Games later this year.
Sourced from http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/silaat/Article/#ixzz1K1XFV1kq
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