New Sabah's Sprint Queen

7th April, 2010

KOTA KINABALU: Jarmella Washif is the new sprint queen of the Kota Kinabalu Division Schools Sports Council Track and Field Championship after upsetting favourite Cynthia Manghing in the Girls’ Under-18 100m finals yesterday.

The opening day of the meet saw the Ranau lass clock a personal best and which is also a record, 11.8s (hand time). Prior to this, her personal best was 12.3s at the State Championship last year. So for Cynthia who has been a dominant force in the blue ribbon event for the last two years now, has finally found a rival in the business, as Jarmella proved that she is now the one to beat.

Cynthia, representing Penampang, took the silver with a time of 12.1s followed by team-mate Jesyline Stephen, who claimed the bronze with 12.6s. Jarmella’s team-mate Emily Yukon finished in fourth (13.1s).

This was the first time that Jarmella has beaten Cynthia and she attributes her success to hard training.“I’ve been training very hard till I vomited,” she said.“And I have been training regularly … five times a week, except on Thursday and Sunday, which are my rest days. Jarmella is training under her personal coach Washif Jafri, who is her father!

Washif said that he was not really surprised to see her daughter go below the 12 seconds mark.“We have been working hard towards achieving this specific target. In fact I’m not too surprised. However, I didn’t expect her to do 11.8s because at most I’ve predicted is 11.9s.“And I expect her to do better as she has yet to peak. She is now at 90 to 95 per cent. We are hoping that she will hit her best form during the State Championship or the Sukma,” said Washif.

Meanwhile, Cynthia’s personal coach William Isidore was not too disappointed to see his sprinter finished as second best.“I think I’ll take her defeat in a positive manner. In fact this is a good lesson for her to learn from and help remind her that she is not unbeatable. I hope with this she will train even harder.

Besides the gold medal feat, Jarmella also won two silver medals. She claimed her first silver medal in the long jump event and she was quite happy with this as she only picked up the event barely a week ago. She leapt a distance of 4.98m to finish behind gold medal winner, Ranau’s Ana Lydia Tinngi who recorded 5.38m.

In the 4×100m relay, Jarmella and Co had to settle for second as the gold medal was won by Penampang, spearheaded by Cynthia. Jarmella can seal her sprint queen tag on the final day today as she will be running in the 200m event with both Cynthia and Jesyline as rivals.

In the boys’ category, Nicky Ah Hill from Tuaran emerged as the new sprint king of the Under-18 category. He clocked 10.7s to take the gold medal while the silver went to Sebastian Lee Azcona of Kota Kinabalu who was a fraction of second behind on 10.8s followed by team-mate Asif Farhan in third with 11s. Last year’s winner, Jesly Justin from Penampang claimed the fourth spot, also on 11 seconds.

Defending overall champion Ranau are on course to retain the title after bagging a total of 20 gold medals on the opening day. They also won 22 silver medals and another 12 bronze medals. Penampang is in second on 12 gold, five silver and 11 bronze medals while Kota Kinabalu was third with 9, 16 and 17 bronxe medals. Host Tuaran ended the day with 7 gold, 5 silver and 8 bronze medals. The meet ends today.

Report from sabah times

More reports;

1) Kosmo

2) Utusan

3) RTM