The Star : Birmingham to stay

Friday October 5, 2012
By RAJES PAUL

KUALA LUMPUR: National swimming coach Paul Birmingham (pic) will stay put in Malaysia but expects a change of guard in the squad as the country looks at ways to make a bigger splash in the international arena.

At the London Olympic Games in August, Malaysian swimmers were overshadowed by the divers.

Malaysia had only two qualifiers in swimming – Khoo Cai Lin and Heidi Gan – while the diving squad showed their depth by parading nine qualifiers, led by Pandelela Rinong.

Cai Lin did not go beyond the heats in the 800m freestyle while Heidi put up a commendable showing en route to finishing 16th in the 10km marathon.

But it was Pandelela who stole the show with her historic bronze medal effort in the 10m individual platform event to become Malaysia’s first woman Olympic medallist and put diving in the same elite league as badminton.

This has led to Amateur Swimming Union of Malaysia (Asum) secretary Edwin Chong telling critics to watch out for new faces in the national team.

“Paul will continue to lead the national swimming team but we need to make some changes in the training programme. New faces will be identified at the end of this year,” said Edwin.

Australian Paul, who has been in Malaysia since 2007, has done well to improve the standard of the swimmers. He led Malaysia to a big success at the Laos SEA Games in 2009 and guided several swimmers to qualify for the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games on merit.

“Paul has earmarked some new talents ... their names will be revealed later. Asum have no problems over the small participation of swimmers at the London Olympics but we know that we need to bring in new faces and give them the correct exposure if we are to move forward,” said Edwin.

Malaysia lost several good swimmers at the start of the year, including Siow Yi Ting, Leung Chii Lin and Chui Lai Kwan.

Besides Olympian Cai Lin, some of the more prominent members of the swim team are Daniel Bego, Kevin Yeap, Christina Loh, Vernon Lee, Lim Ching Hwang, Yap See Tuan, Ian James Barr, Erika Kong, Hii Siew Siew and Marellyn Liew.

Daniel, the top male athlete at the Laos SEA Games, may not last long in the team as he is battling injuries.

Edwin said that although the swimmers are training diligently under Paul’s watchful eyes daily, there will be no major tournaments for them until the end of the year.

“This is the examination period for many of the national swimmers and we want them to concentrate on their studies. Most of the major tournaments are over anyway,” he said.