KUCHING: Selangor's swimmer Andrew Goh and Negri Sembilan's shooter Gan Chen Jie were declared as the Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Malaysia Games (Sukma) respectively as the biennial event ended in Sarawak today.
Andrew captured five golds out of seven events, setting two national records and two Sukma records.
In the 100m breaststroke, he swam one minute 01.39 seconds to rewrite his own mark of 1:02.30 set at the Malaysia Open in May.
Two days later, Andrew broke his own 50m national breaststroke twice. He swam 28.03 in the morning heats to beat his mark of 28.10 set at last year's Malaysia Open. He returned to the pool in the afternoon final to smash that mark with 27.40.
Remarkably, this is faster than the 2023 Phnom Penh Sea Games winning time of 27.70 set by Felix Viktor Iberle of Indonesia.
The 20-year-old Andrew also smashed the 200m breaststroke Sukma record with a time of 2:16.40 to beat Ng Jing Fu's 2:17.47 set in 2018.
He later teamed up with Teoh Kar Chuan, Jayden Goh and Loke Yew Jien to break their own 4x100m medley relay record of 3:49.98 set in 2016 with 3:49.12.
"It really is an honour that they have selected me for the Sportsman award, I'm very proud of myself and thankful to my team as their support throughout this whole competition has helped me achieve this award.
"The organisers selected me for a reason, so I'm just going to keep working harder to prove they made the right decision," Andrew told Timesport.
Meanwhile, Chen Jie proved that she deserved the Sportswoman award after winning a whopping seven golds in Kuching.
The 20-year-old also broke two Games' records, in the 10m air rifle and 50m rifle three-position events. In the 10m air rifle, she set a new record of 243.7 points while in the 50m rifle three-position event, she scored 449 points.
Chen Jie also won gold in the 50m rifle prone, 10m air rifle team, 50m rifle prone team, 50m rifle three-position team and 10m air rifle mixed.
The selection for the best athlete awards was based on three main criteria: the number of gold won, national records broken and Sukma records broken.
The other criteria were: the ratio of medals won to the number of events participated in and the number of medals won in individual events.