Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 24, 2020: For Malaysia's Ng Yan Yee, the Covid-19 pandemic was a blessing in disguise, for the 27-year-old national diver took full advantage of the break in competition and training to fully recover from an injury.
Focusing more on increasing her fitness via strength training, this enabled her to start her preparation for Tokyo in earnest.
“As a professional athlete, injury is a normal thing in our careers; the more we want to avoid it, the higher the risk of an injury occurring,” she said.
“I have faced severe injuries such as a back pain and I was at the stage of giving up. But my teammates helped me to boost my spirit and keep working hard to recover from the injury and stay in contention to be one of the best national divers.”
Wendy, as she is fondly known among the diving fraternity, said that making mistakes in executing a dive was not unusual.
“To succeed, one must face failure and mistakes in order to improve. If I make a mistake I will not think about it and just focus on my jump. I will only look towards rectifying the mistake after the event is over. It will remain at the back of my mind but I will not let it affect my focus to complete the following dive.”
As an athlete, Ng Yan Yee wants to give her best for the country.
It will be an honour for her to represent Malaysia for the third time at the Olympic Games, at Tokyo next summer.
Her hope is to give the best performance and at the same time improve her ranking at the Olympic Games.
For her, the important thing now is to focus on the training sessions in order to be more consistent in executing her dives.
“My most memorable moment in life is qualification to my third Olympics,” she says.
“Even though nobody believes in you, you need to believe in yourself and never give up because the journey as an athlete will never be easy," Yan Yee added, as she welcomes the younger generation to get more involved and pressure the seniors.
Source: Olympic Council of Malaysia