Sarawak to have its own dedicated Wushu Training Centre

KUCH­ING: The much awaited wushu cen­tre for Sarawak will be com­pleted within two years.

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Arts, Cul­ture, Youth and Sports Datuk Ab­dul Karim Rah­man Hamzah said the RM12 mil­lion fa­cil­ity will fur­ther boost wushu de­vel­op­ment in the state.

“It is in­side the Sarawak Sports Com­plex and it has al­ready been ap­proved by the State gov­ern­ment. We are go­ing for ten­der soon and hope­fully the con­struc­tion will start soon this year.

“In less than two years, we should see a proper wushu cen­tre, a big hall where we can have train­ing and or­gan­ise lo­cal, state or re­gional com­pe­ti­tions there,” he told re­porters at the Wushu Fed­er­a­tion of Sarawak (WFS) Chi­nese Lu­nar New Year cel­e­bra­tion at its premises at Tabuan Laru yes­ter­day.

When asked on his ex­pec­ta­tions for wushu at the Jo­hor Sukma this July, Karim said wushu is ex­pected to do well as in ev­ery Sukma, the sport had not failed to de­liver gold medals for the Sarawak con­tin­gent.

“Wushu is one of the sports that I am not re­ally too wor­ried about be­cause the WFS, led by Allen Wong, has very com­mit­ted com­mit­tee mem­bers and coaches and they are very pas­sion­ate about devel­op­ing wushu in Sarawak.

“I hope the of­fi­cials in other sports as­so­ci­a­tions would be like what we see in wushu,” he added.

Ear­lier, Karim ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the prob­lem of the Wuhan coro­n­avirus will be over­come soon look­ing at the way how the China au­thor­i­ties is han­dling it.

“I know that WFS used to send ath­letes to China for train­ing and ex­po­sure and this will be af­fected by the novel coro­n­avirus out­break.

“There is a need to mon­i­tor our ath­letes be­cause we don’t want them to fall sick due to this virus,” he said.

On an­other note, Karim said he was pleased to see that more peo­ple from other races are tak­ing up wushu and he hoped that the WFS would strive harder to bring the sport to greater heights.

“Wushu is now an open sport and I be­lieve that with this kind of ef­fort by WFS to en­cour­age more peo­ple of dif­fer­ent races and re­li­gions in devel­op­ing wushu, we can go far,” he said.

NEWS SOURCE: The Borneo Post (Sports page Headline- Dated 02.02.2020)

Dated 02.02.2020)