NILAI: After successfully bagging two golds at the 2024 Asian Track Cycling Championships (ACC) recently, young national women's track cycling star Nurul Izzah Izzati Mohd Asri is now harbouring a mission to renew the national record at the 2024 UCI Track Nations Cup Cycling Championships in Hong Kong next month.
The champion in the making said her recent success has been a welcome boost for her to smash the records she held in the 200 metres (m) time trial and team sprint events which she set last year.
"Regarding the Hong Kong Nation Cup, my target is for the 200m team sprint time trial. I can improve again, maybe break the national record.
"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 (Feb 28).
At the recent 2024 Asian Track Cycling Championships (ACC) in New Delhi, Nurul Izzah, nicknamed "The Pocket Rocket Woman", created a sensation when she emerged champion of the women's Keirin and 500m time trial events.
At the same tournament, she also managed to break national records for three events involving the 200m time trial (10.903 seconds), the 500m time trial (34.226s) and the 750m team sprint (49.025s).
The Kedah-born rider hopes that she will be included in the Road to Gold (RTG) Programme for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games in an effort to grab a ticket to the prestigious sports event four years from now.
She said that she had started to preparing herself to go through the preparations for the prestigious Games since the end of the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games in September.
Meanwhile, Nurul Izzah said she is determined to increase her speed to be comparable to the speed of world-class racers to ensure that she is able to give fierce competition to racers 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 abit 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. — Bernama
Keywords: Nurul Izzah Izzati Mohd Asri, UCI Track Nations Cup, ACC New Delhi 2024, track cycling