PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Athletics Federation was criticised for making a mistake in Zaidatul Husniah Zulkifli’s 2024’s Perlis Open national 100 metre record submission World Athletics (WA) for verification.
National coach Poad Kassim said the 31-year-old initially thought her record was nullified immediately and felt quite upset about it, according to the New Straits Times.
In October 2024, Zaidatul broke G. Shanti’s 31-year-old record of 11.50 seconds by clocking 11.49s at the Perlis Open. However, that has yet to be recognised by WA due to the MAF’s “failure”, as quoted, to submit the wind reading and the results.
Poad then urged MAF to be careful about such matters to avoid such mistakes that could affect the athlete’s well-being.
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Meanwhile, MAF technical director John Ballard, acknowledged the error and blamed it on “administrative oversight”, as quoted and said the readings for the jump and hurdle events were also not initially submitted to WA together with the results.
“We have written to WA and submitted all the results with the wind readings. We have also provided the link to the Perlis Open results.
“Hopefully, WA will rectify this by next week,” Ballard said.
Ballard also assured that a wind reading of minus 0.2 was set in Zaidatul’s national record, saying “it still stands”, as quoted.
