KUALA LUMPUR: The Paralympic Council Malaysia (MPM) continues to hope to see the national contingent achieve four gold medals at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
MPM president Datuk Seri Megat D Shahriman Zaharudin said that four gold medals are not an official target but a goal set to work hard to achieve that hope.
Without specifying the sports that they are counting on, Megat said that four gold medals are a realistic number based on the performance of the athletes throughout the year, including at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games 2022 last October and at the World Championships.
“Four golds are the objective that we see as realistic to achieve; we aim to collect 10 gold medals from the Paralympic Games (following the achievement of three golds each in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020).
“Four golds are not an official target, but that is the target we set based on research from early this year until now, and it is very important for us,“ he said when met at the Sponsorship Award Ceremony for medal winners at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games 2022, here today.
Commenting further, Megat did not see the number of four golds as pressure on the national contingent when other countries dare to set much higher gold targets.
Earlier, at the ceremony held at the Paralympic Sports Excellence Centre in Kampung Pandan here in conjunction with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2023, the medal-winning lineup at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games received incentives in the form of cash.
The incentives given saw gold medal winners receiving RM2,000, silver medals (RM1,000), and bronze RM500.
The Malaysian contingent brought home a total of 39 medals, surpassing the target of 35 medals, with a breakdown of seven golds, 15 silvers, and 17 bronzes at the quadrennialevent. – Bernama
