NILAI – After successfully bagging two golds at the recent Asian Track Cycling Championships, young star Nurul Izzah Izzati Mohd Asri is now on a mission to renew her national records at the UCI Track Nations Cup Cycling Championships in Hong Kong next month.
The champion in the making has said her recent success has been an added tonic for her to smash her records in the 200m time trial and team sprint, which she set last year.
“Regarding the Hong Kong Nations Cup, my target is for the 200m team sprint and the time trial. I can improve again, maybe break the national records.
“It’s possible to get on the podium, but it’s a bit of a struggle because I’m still in the top 20, I’ll try my best,” she said when met by reporters at the Nilai National Velodrome here today.
At the recent Asian Track Cycling Championships in New Delhi, Nurul Izzah, nicknamed “The Pocket Rocket Woman,” created a sensation when she emerged champion in the keirin and 500m time trial.
At the same tournament, she also managed to break national records for three events – the 200m time trial (10.903sec), the 500m time trial (34.226sec) and the 750m team sprint (49.025sec).
The Kedah-born rider hopes that she will be included in the Road to Gold Programme for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics in an effort to grab a ticket to the prestigious sports event four years from now.
She said that she had started to prepare herself to go through the preparations for the prestigious Games since the end of the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games in September.
Meanwhile, Nurul Izzah said she is determined to increase her speed to that of world-class racers to ensure that she would be able to put up a fierce fight against cyclists from other countries.
“A lot of hard work for me to improve my time to be comparable to the world level, and I also need to increase my size a bit more, build my muscles while my weight is okay, before I came to the National Sports Council, but I need to build the muscles again,” she said. – February 28, 2024