The duo, with Lee Zhien Huey as the reserve, were not in town to share in the joy of winning the 2011 National Women’s Team Award last night due to their campaign in London.
Katrina and Hui Chuen, who played pivotal roles in helping the synchronised swimming team make a clean sweep of all the five gold medals in the Indonesia SEA Games last year, are hoping to beat the odds to win a place in the Olympics in August.
Synchronised swimming offers eight spots for the team event and 24 for the duet.
Five of the eight quota spots for the team event were determined at the World Championships in Shanghai last year with Britain (host/Europe), China (Asia), Egypt (Afrika), Canada (America) and Australia (Oceania) booking their berths.
These five teams are assured places in the duet as well which means only 19 spots are up for grabs.
Malaysia have never competed in synchronised swimming at the Olympic level and Katrina-Hui Chuen need to finish among the top 16 to get in automatically.
If they fail, there is still a second chance as they will compete in the swim-off for the three remaining places.
Malaysia are only competing in the duet, and not the team event, due to the gap in technical skills compared to the rest of the world.
Katrina and Hui Chuen finished 26th in the last Olympic qualifiers in Beijing four years ago but have since raised their level of difficulties.
No comments:
Post a Comment