MIRI: Minister for Transport Sarawak Datuk Seri Lee Kim Shin is appealing the Sarawak Sports Corporation (SSC) to place a full-time swimming coach here to make Miri as a centre of excellence for swimming.
“I believe with a full-time swimming coach for this division, it will help to strengthen and build up this division standard (in swimming),” he said.
He made the comment when met after presenting tokens to seven swimmers from Miri Amateur Swimming Association (Masa) who will represent Sarawak in the upcoming Malaysia Invitation Age Group (MIAG) competition at Bukit Jalil in Kuala Lumpur on April 13 to 16 (next week). This was at his service centre in Senadin. Lee added, when he was the Assistant Minister of Sports and Communications in 2009 to 2016, Miri used to have a centre of excellence for sport of swimming.
Those seven swimmers concerned are Claire Lau Yu Rong ; Hector Ho Rze Jun ; Bong Rui Jie ; Nuri Saadan Kahulid ;Ryan Lkaw Chee Heng ; Liysha Liung Chen, and Ethren Ethanael Lim Churn.
“Miri division has a lot of potential swimmers; in fact it used to be swimming power house for Sarawak. Take for example for this coming MIAG 2023 in Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, we managed to produce seven talented swimmers for the event although we don’t have a full time coach in swimming, and I believe, when we have a full time coach that can help to build up their talents, we can go further,” he told the media.
Also present at the token presentation were State swimming coach Marianne Yvonne Heemskerk, 78, a former butterfly swimmer from the Netherlands.
Marianne won the silver medal in the 100m butterfly at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy.
