HANGZHOU, Sept 25 — There should be changes in the approach to empower wushu so that the national camp can get out of the shackles of uncertain achievements at international sports championships.

Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh said based on the information received, countries that successfully won medals in wushu events on the international stage, on average, make investments to get coaches from China.

Hannah personally thinks Malaysia has no choice but to follow in the same footsteps and dare to spend big on sports.

“If we still use the same SOP (standard operating procedure), still use the same budget and the same method and formula, we will not get different results (from now).

“When I saw the SEA Games and now (Asian Games), I saw the performance of (athletes) competing with Sydney (Sydney Chin) I knew the method needed to be changed.

“Sydney and other athletes need more tournaments to remove the fear of competition,” she said.

Hannah said this at a dinner party with local media personnel covering the national contingent’s trip to the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games here, yesterday.

Currently, the national wushu squad has a full-time coach from China, Zhang Yongsheng, who was offered a two-year contract to design the programme for the 2025 and 2027 SEA Games and the next edition of the Asian Games.

At the same time, Hannah said the same thing was also raised by experts from Nippon Sport Science University (NSSU) in Japan who also did not encourage excessive pressure on athletes when participating in a tournament.

Yesterday, luck was not on Sydney’s side after finishing the final of the women’s taijiquan+taijijian event in fourth place with a difference of 0.016 points behind the bronze winner at the Xiaoshan Guali Sports Centre, here.

“Sydney told me that her personal goal was not to make mistakes and that she didn’t make mistakes which meant her performance was flawless as she followed everything she learnt but when she went to (compete) in other countries, there were (athletes) who were more outstanding. Sydney has given her best,” she said. — Bernama