Aaliyah bags four gold medals in South Korea

KUALA LUMPUR: National water skiing ace Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah ended her campaign at the IWWF Asian Waterski Championships in Chuncheon, South Korea on Saturday with four golds.

According to the tournament's website http://www.iwwfed-ea.org/classic/22ASIA03/, the 19-year-old captured her first gold medal on Friday after she scored 7,440 points in the women's open tricks event.

Aaliyah Yoong then continued her impressive performance in the women's open jump on Saturday as she produced a leap of 40.6 metres (m) in the preliminaries and 37.2m in the final round to capture another gold.

The teenager also was dominant in women slalom with marks of 0.00/55kmh/13m for her third gold and completed her clean sweep by taking the overall title with a total of 3000.00 points for her fourth gold medal the same day.

Malaysian Waterski and Wakeboard Federation (MWWF) head coach Hanifah Yoong said Malaysia had a total tally of five gold, a silver and three bronze including in boys category.

"Four from Aaliyah, one from her brother Adam Yoong in the under-17 (U17) boys' tricks, one silver from Aiden Yoong U17 boys' overall and three bronzes (Aiden U17 boys' tricks and U17 boys' slalom and Adam U17 jump.

"Congratulations Malaysia's team," said Hanifah Yoong, who is also Aaliyah's father.

Adam Yoong also broke new barriers as he set a new personal best with a distance of 27.0m (in the jump), beating his previous record of 15.9m, which he set at the 2019 Asian Championships, Bangkok.

Meanwhile, his 16-year-old brother Aiden Yoong erased his previous record of 20.1m by jumping 23.9m.

-- BERNAMA