KUALA LUMPUR, June 23 — National track cycling champion Datuk Mohd Azizulhasni Awang will be holding a meeting with Road To Gold (RTG) committee programme coordinator Datuk Stuart Ramalingam next week, to discuss all the requirements and welfare that he needs.

The 35-year-old rider said the result of the meeting is important to enable him to continue to perform at his best when taking on the country’s challenge on the international stage.

"I should have met with (RTG) a few days ago, but my schedule is quite busy so I only know about the approved request through newspapers and news portals and will only meet with Stuart at the beginning of next week.

"So for now I don’t know in detail (information on the approved requests),” he said after attending the 2023 Olympic Day Celebration: Olympic Council of Malaysia-Ministry of Education at the Bukit Jalil Sports School here today.

On Monday (June 19), the RTG committee agreed to fulfil all requests made by the cycling champion synonymous with the nickname "The Pocket Rocketman” to ensure that the cyclist gets everything he needs to be in top form ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Mohd Azizulhasni was previously reported to have expressed his disappointment with the National Sports Council (NSC) which failed to provide a complete support system here in preparation for the Olympic Games.

The 2017 Keirin Track Cycling World Champion said a series of discussions were held with NSC in the year before he returned from his training base in Melbourne, Australia to the National Velodrome in Nilai earlier this year, but so far no solution has been found.

In other developments, he expressed his gratitude for all the hard work he deemed worthwhile as his latest International Cycling Union (UCI) rankings rose for the keirin and sprint events.

"I am not worried about the ranking because I did skip last season, but as soon as I started and now being number three in the world, it has raised my spirits. This ranking shows that the cycling team is on track to go to the Olympics,” he said.

The position of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic keirin silver medallist rose from 10th to third behind Australian rider Matthew Richardson who was in second place in the keirin event yesterday, while world champion from the Netherlands, Harrie Lavreysen was in first place.

As for the sprint event, the Dungun-born rider jumped from 19th position to occupy the sixth place behind the Israeli rider, Mikhail Yakovlev in the fifth position and the Japanese rider, Kaiya Ota in the fourth position.

Azizul previously underwent surgery in April last year following a rare heart problem known as the right coronary artery that flows from the aorta in an odd position (AAORCA). — Bernama