KUALA LUMPUR: Kedah Sports School coach Mohd Poad Md Kassim will return to running the national sprint camp in the near future, according to Malaysia Athletics (MA) president Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim.
He said the matter had already been agreed by the MA committee members to bring in Mohd Poad to train eight national sprinters in Bukit Jalil in preparation for the Thailand SEA Games this December.
Shahidan said the governing body did not want the issue involving several national sprinters and Technical Director Robert Ballard to be prolonged and wanted all athletes to be able to train as usual as soon as possible.
“Athletes need to train, because our goal is the SEA Games, if this issue lasts we will lose, we want eight sprinters to focus on training because they have the potential to get medals,“ he told reporters at the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) here today.
Elaborating further, Shahidan said he would leave it to the disciplinary committee to resolve the issue involving several athletes who did not want to attend training before.
The media had previously reported that several sprinters chose to boycott Ballard over the past month and claimed to have received threats to be expelled from the program if they voiced dissatisfaction, which the Australian coach had vehemently denied.
One of the athletes claimed that no effective programme had been implemented since Ballard joined the athletics camp two years ago while the other chose to return to training under former national coach Mohd Poad.
Meanwhile, MA vice-president Sallehudin Satar said the proposal to bring the name of Mohd Poad as the national sprint coach and six other coaches for the national athletics camp had already been sent to the National Sports Council and the decision was expected to be known next week.
“Next week the president will meet NSC director-general Jefri Ngadirin, and we will know the result but for now we have not informed the names of the coaches,“ he said.
Earlier, the media reported that NSC agreed to a request from the MA to appoint six coaches to strengthen preparations of the national athletics squad for several major tournaments including preparations for the Thailand SEA Games this December.
The agreement was reached during a meeting between Jefri and the MA delegation led by Shahidan on April 10, but at that time the list of coaches had not been submitted.
The list of six new coaches is made up of three overseas coaches and three local coaches to empower the coaching aspects of all disciplines, including sprints, throws and jumps.
