KUALA LUMPUR: National men’s swimming ace, Khiew Hoe Yean, is determined to catch two fish with one hook at the World Aquatics Championships Doha 2024, in Qatar, which is scheduled to begin on Feb 2 until 18, next year.
With less than two months away from the competition, Hoe Yean vowed to make the Doha meet a stepping stone for him to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games, in Paris.
“I’ve been trying to qualify for the Olympic Games in Paris since early this year, but unfortunately I did not manage to do it. I will definitely try it again in the next World Aquatics Championships,” he told Bernama.
Hoe Yean is expected to race in his pet event, the men’s 400-metre freestyle, at the Aspire Dome, and needs to swim under 3 minutes and 46.78 seconds (s), the Olympic qualifying time for the event.
Should he fail to do so in Doha, Hoe Yean said that he would definitely try to secure Paris 2024 tickets and make his debut, through other competitions, before the Olympic qualification ends on June 23.
The 21-year-old athlete also expressed his hope to erase his personal best of 3:48.72s, which is also a national record, that he clocked at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
“I want to break my personal best because I still think I need another level to break through. I have been working hard on overall things to improve myself, such as the techniques and timing (in training),” he added.
In the meantime, the Kuala Lumpur-born said that he had already moved on from the disappointment in the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, as he was just mere seconds away from bronze medal in the final.
The UCSI University computer science student finished the race in fourth place, behind his nemesis from Vietnam, Nguyen Huy Hoang, who clocked 3:49.16s, while Kim Woo-min from South Korea snatched the gold medal after posting 3:44.36s, while China’s Pan Zhanle took the silver with 3:48.81s.
Hoe Yean said that he is now in much better form, after he came back from making his first appearance in the Asiad, last September.
Recently, Hoe Yean further cemented his status as one of Malaysia’s best prospects in the pool, by breaking the men’s 1,500m freestyle national record at the Queensland Championships in Australia.
Hoe Yean, who emerged as the second best in the final, clocked 15:21.92s, to erase the previous mark of 15:23.61s set by Jeffrey Ong in 1991.–Bernama
