Brought to you by Standard Chartered Bank Brunei.
We are now just a few months away from the Tokyo Olympics! Brunei last sent a swimmer to the world’s biggest sporting spectacle in 2012 and this was made possible with the International Olympic Council’s concept of universality. This year we got the duo of Muhammad Isa Ahmad and Christian Nikles as the top prospects to represent the country at the Japan capital and Yee Chun Leong of BruSports News sat down with them recently to talk about their chances.
Q: How are you both looking at the upcoming Olympics?
Muis: I will try to achieve whatever I can in the time frame but won’t be disappointed if I don’t get it. I usually go into any race with no expectations.
Christian: I have never trained this hard in my life and never gone this fast in training. But it is encouraging with the times that I have set.
Q: You guys have been swimming together for a long time. How do you view the competition among yourselves?
Muis: For me, whoever gets it should be the one who swims the fastest or has the highest FINA points. That person obviously deserves to go.
Christian: There is no “this guy deserves it more or that guy deserves it more”. It can be Haziq or even some random person who might be Bruneian and training in the US. Whoever has the most points will go and that is how it should be.
Q: How do you get more FINA points?
Christian: You get these points in relation to the world records and it resets yearly. So you will get more points when your time is closer to the world record.
I only keep track of my points whenever I see them when I get on the results page.
Q: What tournaments are you looking forward to in the coming months?
Muis: There is the ISB sprints in February, followed by the Malaysia Age Group in March, the Malaysia Open in April and the Singapore Open in May.
The competitions in Malaysia and Singapore act as their Olympic trials. Our plan is to go to at least two of those.
Q: I’ve heard that you have 13 training sessions per week and that Is quite a workload. How are you coping with that?
Christian: Every time you think you have adjusted, the following week just gets harder. As long as find your feet she (national swim coach Wu Na) will find a way to pull rug under you
Muis: I thought I put in a good set then the next day it will just be more difficult. She knows and she makes sure you do more the next session. She keeps tabs on our times, analyses them and monitors our well being.
She knows when you are tired or fatigue but training will be hard no matter what.
Q: Besides the Tokyo Olympics, what other targets have you set out for the year?
Christian: Every time when you race, you just want to have best time. I’m just trying to stay healthy for the whole year.
That way I will be ready to face every competition both mentally and physically.
Muis: From now until March, we only got one competition. I want to be as close to personal best as possible.
We are working on our strokes every single day. There is always something to better even if you think that you are good already.
Q: Before we end this interview, is there anyone you want to give a shoutout to?
Muis: I just want to give a shoutout to the Association (Brunei Amateur Swimming Association) for helping us. They always do more from the previous year. We are also thankful for getting coach in.
Christian: Eventhough the people in BASA are volunteers, they handle the association so much better each year. There is always improvement. We also see that there are more swimmers than ever before because of them.
We also have to give a shoutout to coach and we will continue to follow her instructions.
Muis: We also can’t forget the kids who beat us at training some times. We really have some good upcoming swimmers such as Joe Ling. He is only 13 now and wait till he comes our age.
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