SEPANG: Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh has apologised for the national contingent's failure to win a gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
However, she stressed that the multi-million ringgit Road To Gold (RTG) programme is not a failure as it also covers the 2024 Paris and 2028 Los Angeles Games.
"I, on behalf of the national contingent, apologise to Malaysians because we have yet to bring home the Olympic gold medal for Malaysia," said Yeoh after arriving at KLIA today.
"As announced before, the RTG is for two Olympic cycles covering 2024 Paris and 2028 Los Angeles... what we see, there's improvement from the RTG athletes."
Malaysia ended the competition with two bronze medals in badminton to place 80th overall in the medal table from 206 countries and was the fourth highest ranked Southeast Asian country behind the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.
In total, five personal bests were bettered in Paris, with three of them being national records. The national records were achieved by Azizulhasni Awang and Nurul Izzah Izzati Asri in track cycling, and Aniq Kasdan in weightlifting.
Yeoh said the national athletes tried their best, and the new national records were positive results in Paris.
"Three national records were broken by Azizul, Nurul Izzah and Aniq, while Shah Firdaus Sahrom in cycling and Syaqiera (Mashayikh) in archery broke their personal records," she said.
"All of our athletes tried their best. Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah, Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik, Lee Zii Jia and Aniq did well.
"The RTG committee will have a meeting and get the technical report from each team from the Paris Olympics. We are preparing the account which will be audited and tabled at Parliament.
"We will answer the account issues, we have used the funds transparently. All the requests and the top-up service from the stakeholders who are the coaches and athletes we have delivered before they left for the Paris Games."