MARINA OPTIMISTIC ZAIDATUL CAN DELIVER EVEN BETTER PERFORMANCES

PUTRAJAYA, Jan 19 (Bernama) -- National sports legend Datuk Marina Chin is optimistic that the country’s sprint queen Zaidatul Husniah Zulkifli can still deliver improved performances in the future.

She said Zaidatul, fondly known as "Adeq", seems to have a stable life after getting married and has the potential to achieve even greater results in upcoming competitions.

Marina, who is also a board member of the National Sports Institute (ISN), said that if the 31-year-old athlete requires any support, the institute is ready to provide whatever assistance she may need.

"I believe Adeq can enhance her performance. Her life is stable now, she is married, has moral support, and so on. I hope that if she needs anything, she can approach ISN, and ISN will assist her.

"I want to see Adeq retire having achieved all her goals and dreams as an athlete," she told reporters at the Milo Breakfast Day 2025 event here today.

Meanwhile, Marina reminded the Malaysian Athletics Federation (MAF) to be more thorough and avoid repeating issues of unrecognised records, as previously experienced by Zaidatul.

She noted that such incidents could demoralise athletes, especially after they have worked hard to achieve such milestones.

"I also don’t want us to focus solely on one athlete. We have junior athletes, and I hope they will send larger teams so that newcomers can gain experience. I hope they continue pushing younger athletes to participate in competitions," she said.

On Oct 12 last year, Zaidatul broke the national women’s 100m record of 11.50 seconds, previously held by G. Shanti since May 7, 1993, just months before Zaidatul was born on Aug 20.

However, her time of 11.49s was initially reported as unrecognised by World Athletics (WA) due to the absence of proper wind reading documentation.

On Thursday, MAF announced that the national record had finally been recognised by WA.

-- BERNAMA