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‘Pocket Rocketman’ ends sprint challenge, shifts focus to keirin

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Azizulhasni Awang fails to qualify for the quarterfinals after finishing third in the round of sixteen.

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Mohd Azizulhasni Awang
Malaysia’s Azizulhasni Awang competes during the men’s sprint event at the 2024 Paris Olympics. (AP pic)

PARIS:
National track cycling ace Azizulhasni Awang ended his campaign in the sprint event at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in the round of sixteen at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines National Velodrome tonight.

He did not qualify for the quarterfinals after finishing third in the round of sixteen repechage round, trailing 0.190s behind Mateusz Rudyk from Poland, who clocked 9.966s, while Mikhail Yakovlev from Israel (+0.0543s) finished in second place.

Only the winner of the repechage round advances to the quarterfinals.

The ‘Pocket Rocketman’ had to compete in the repechage after losing to Jeffrey Hoogland (9.772s) from the Netherlands, trailing by +0.037s in heat 6 of the round of sixteen.

Earlier, Azizulhasni broke his national record with a time of 9.402s to finish 10th in the qualifying round, surpassing the 9.523s record set at the Asian Track Cycling Championships (ACC) in Nilai last year.

Speaking to Bernama after the race, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallist in the keirin event said he was overall satisfied with the start of this campaign after achieving the desired time in the qualifying round.

“The earlier plan was to go round by round, so I am happy to beat Luca Spiegel of Germany and Great Britain’s Hamish Turnbull in the 1/32 and 1/16.

“Then, the plan was to beat Hoogland, but unfortunately, I ended up losing to him. Technically and tactically it was a perfect race, but I just didn’t have enough speed, he was a lot quicker using a bigger gear.

“Then for the repechage, (coach) John Beasley said save the energy for keirin. If I go through the repechage, I need to face the fastest rider Harrie Lavreysen (of the Netherlands in the quarterfinals), and I’m going to waste energy by prolonging the race, so we wanted to save energy for the next two days and focus on the keirin,” he said.

Earlier, another national rider, Shah Firdaus Sahrom, did not advance to the second round after a tough challenge from Yakovlev in the first round of the event.

Shah then failed to redeem himself in the 1/32 repechage round, finishing second in heat three behind Lithuania’s Vasilijus Lendel, where only the winner of each heat advances to the second round.

Azizulhasni and Shah Firdaus will next compete in their main event, the keirin, starting this Saturday, while Nurul Izzah Izzati Asri will compete in the women’s sprint event starting Friday.

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