Leong Mun Yee to secure 2012 London Olympics berth through synchronised events – Swimming News
2010 Commonwealth Games silver medallist, Leong Mun Yee, will give up her individual events and participation in the synchronised events to attain a spot in the 2012 London Olympic Games qualification.
Mun Yee will participate in the 10m platform and 3m springboard at the 2011 Shanghai World Championships to secure her spot in the Malaysian diving team for the 2012 London.
Mun Yee will collaborate with Pandelela Rinong in the 10m discipline and with Wendy Ng in the 3m springboard discipline at the world titles.
Malaysian diving coach, Yang Zhuliang, explained the placing of Mun Yee in synchronised events and said that it would narrow Mun Yee’s focus on two events and will help her in repeating her bronze medal effort, earned at the 2009 Rome World Championships.
Leong won two silver medals with her respective partners at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games.
With the decision of participating in fewer events, Mun Yee faces a severe constraint of qualifying for the 2012 London Games, as the World Championships will accompany only the top three duos to the 2012 Olympics.
The Malaysian coach expressed his desire, saying that their national duos have never qualified for the Olympic Games but Mun Yee has the talent to represent her country at the Olympic stage.
The coach said Mun Yee has represented Malaysia three times in the Olympic Games in the individual 3m springboard and he believes that she can qualify for the upcoming Olympics by pairing with Wendy in the 3m event.
Zhuliang said, “We want to free Mun Yee from the strain of competing in too many events. There are preliminaries and semi-finals at the world championships and it is too taxing to go through so many dives.”
The coach added, “We want Mun Yee-Pandelela to defend the bronze medal won in the 10m platform synchronised event at the last championships and qualify early for the Olympics. But, of course, the competition is stronger compared to two years ago.”
In addition, Mun Yee and Pandelela will accompany six other divers at the upcoming German Open, whereas, the same team will head towards the 2011 World Championships to confirm their spots for London 2012.
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