PARIS: National diver Nur Dhabitah Sabri revealed that, her journey to the 2024 Paris Olympics was far from smooth as she was racing against time to fix her skills and technics within a month’s time after being awarded an unused country quota ticket to Paris.
Nur Dhabitah, who ended-up last in the final of the women’s 3-metre springboard event at the Olympics Aquatic Centre here today said she wasn’t really ready for an Olympics level challenge.
The 25-year-old, said she was on the verge of giving up the sport after failing to qualify for the Olympics during the last qualification event - the 2024 World Championships in Doha, Qatar, in February.
Nur Dhabitah admitted that, it was a challenging phase for her and she didn’t have proper competition training until the World Aquatics allocated an unused quota to Malaysia at the end of June.
“At that time, I felt like I did not want to do this (diving) anymore, to be honest. I am tired, I have to deal with everything.
“Then after that during the two-week training camp, I tried to push, a lot of problems in technique that I had to fix because my techniques were lost. To regain that lost technique would require time, so it was so difficult.
“Within the short period, what do you expect (in today’s event)? I am very satisfied with the results because I know i didn’t prepare much. I didn’t even expect to be in the final,” the disheartened diver told Bernama.
Earlier, the five-time Asian Games medalist, was only able to score 244.80 points overall to be ranked 12th after five dives while China’s Chen Yiwen bagged the gold with 376.00 points.
Nur Dhabitah said, though she is an experienced diver, the changes in body, experience and technic made it difficult for her to catch up.
Meanwhile, she was grateful for the support she received from the National Sports Institute (NSI), National Sports Council (NSC) and coaches to be able to get through the preliminary and semi-finals.
“We now have a good coaching set up, technical director (Bryan Nickson Lomas) and high performance director (Khairul Safwan Mansur), it is all new for the diving team. We are getting there, I think we need to keep the momentum going, no need for changes that can be detrimental to the performance.
“After going back, I want to rest first, I need time for myself...I feel I have been too hard on myself, didn’t appreciate myself enough. I think my body, mind needs rest,” she said.
