NILAI, June 19 — National track cycling head coach John Beasley has promised that Muhammad Shah Firdaus Sahrom will get new bicycles before the Hangzhou Asian Games, scheduled from September 23 to October 8.
Beasley said he would be happy if the new version of the WXR-Vorteq bikes will be ready by the World Championships from August 3-13 in in Glasgow, Scotland but the Asian Games dates looked more realistic.
“Shah Firdaus broke two bikes in last two races. Before this, we had so many crashes and nothing broken, but in last two crashes, two bikes had broken, so but it’s just bad luck. We got a little funding there, so we will make it happen to get a couple more.
“He broke project two and three bikes, but we will be on project four soon. It is designed in a way that, we can make improvements constantly,” he told reporters during the Asian Track Cycling Championships (ACC) at the National Velodrome here, today.
Shah Firdaus, 27, lost his second consecutive bike yesterday, after a crash during the men’s keirin semi-finals, but showed a good fighting spirit to bounce back and ride the damaged bike to qualify for the finals.
In the finals, he rode a prototype version of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics model (project one) to bag bronze, while Datuk Mohd Azizulhasni won the title.
Shah Firdaus lost his previous bike in the Hong Kong International Track Cup series, late last month.
It was reported that, the research and development (R&D) for the bikes used by Mohd Azizulhasni and Shah Firdaus, developed by the National Sports Institute (NSI) through collaborations with Vorteq dan Worx Bikes for the Tokyo Olympics, costs about RM13 million, with each bike valued around RM300,000. — Bernama
