THERE is bad news and there is consolatory news for the national diving team.
The bad news is that the plan to organise the Malaysian leg of the Diving Grand Prix in November will not materialise after all.
The Malaysian GP was initially scheduled to be held in June but was suspended due to Covid-19.
Then there was a proposal to push the event to November but that is not going to happen after Fina, the world governing body for aquatics, announced the cancellation of the event on their website.
That means the national divers, who resumed training at the National Aquatic Centre from June 8, will have no competitions for this year.
Nevertheless, the consolation is that the Amateur Swimming Union of Malaysia (Asum) are working towards setting up two online diving competitions.
They will serve as replacements for the Malaysian and Singapore legs of the aborted Grand Prix.
Its Australian leg in Gold Coast (Nov 6-8) is also in doubt as Australia is yet to reopen its borders.
Get set for a dive into the new normal as this could be a first ever diving meet that involves judges on the online plat form.
"The plan is to hold two online competitions in November. We want to start with a national programme for divers in the states first," said Asum secretary general Mae Chen.
"That will be followed a week later with a programme for divers in the elite national squad under the Olympic programme.
"We also hope to get international participants from other countries to send in their scores and the judges are to award scores on the online platform.
"The intention of having online competitions is really to enable our divers to get some competition exposure before the Diving World Cup next year.
After all, that is going to be the final Olympic qualifier," said Mae who added that they are in talks with broadcasting company Astro to turn the plan into reality.
Malaysia will look to secure more Olympic tickets while four divers — Pandelela Rinong, Leong Mun Yee, Wendy Ng and Nur Dhabitah Sabri — have qualified for the Tokyo Games.