BUDDING gymnast Dorothea Chen Xiao Jing, featuring for the Sarina’s Rhythmic Gymnastics Club (SRGC), stamped her mark in the Grade One section of the Junior Unity Rhythmic Gymnastics Carnival at the Tropicana City Mall in Petaling Jaya recently.
En route to emerging as the overall champion in the category, the nine-year-old also picked up one gold and two bronze medals.
In the competition decided over three disciplines, she flexed her domination in the clubs for the gold medal and settled for the third spot in freehand and hoop.
Showcase of talent: Dorothea Chen bagged the overall champion trophy. SRGC coach Sarina Sundara Rajah praised Chen for displaying her class in a competitive field against her peers.
“Although she came in third in the freehand and hoop, she gave a very respectable display. The participants had to include between 10 and 11 elements to complete each routine. And the top two finishers in both events were more polished with cleaner execution. The champions and runners-up won the judges’ approval with more impressive performances. They were more steady in controlling several balancing positions for two to four seconds,” she added.
Chen’s team mates Nur Syafiqa Arnisha and Pung Xiau Wen from Serdang Rhythmic Angels (SRA) emerged as the best performers in the freehand and hoop respectively.
The SRGC duo of Syafiqa and Badrina Ahmad Nazri completed a perfect finish on the podium in the individual overall standings for the training centre based at Pusat Bandar Puchong.
Syafiqa was the runner-up while Badrina came in third.
A total of eight teams from six clubs — SRGC, Serdang Rhythmic Angels, Taman Rashna, First Rhythmic Gymnastics Academy (FRGA), Kickstart Gymnastics and Subang Club — featured in the one-day meet.
For the team event comprising four Grade One gymnasts and one Grade Two competitor in each line-up, SRGC and Subang Club fielded two teams each while others had a side each in the fray.
All smiles: The winners posing for a group picture Participating teams were required to have representation from at least two different races as part of the organisers’ effort to promote unity through sports.
The top side from SRGC also registered a memorable outing bagging the top position with a combined score of 135.08 points ahead of SRA and Taman Rashna in second (129.72) and third (128.83) respectively.
The quartet of Chen, Syafiqa, Trishna Wong Suet Yee and Aniyah Aira Ahmad from Grade One teamed up with Kuan Meng Qi competing in Grade Two to produce the convincing victory.
Kuan, who has been training under Sarina over the past five years, was the overall runner-up in Grade Two.
In addition, Kuan collected a gold (freehand), a silver (hoop) and a bronze (clubs) from the individual events.
“They were a bundle of nerves during the practice session on the eve of the competition. But, they overcame their fear performing in front of the crowd and rose to the occasion on the following day. We were satisfied with the nine competitors from both teams. It was unfortunate that a gymnast pulled out leaving the four others in the second team to carry the challenge in the team event,” said Sarina, adding that her charges will be going through the classification programme at their training centre on Nov 29 as part of their build up to vie for places in the Selangor Schools Sports Council (MSSS) competition next year.
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