Move to prevent dominance of certain teams in university duathlon series

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The Malakoff University Duathlon Series (MUDS) is expected to undergo some changes to make it more competitive and challenging.

Malakoff, who became the title sponsors for five years, are concerned with the dominance of certain teams in the MUDS.

For the past five seasons, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM) has been hogging the limelight and their runners had emerged overall winners in all the categories.

First-t imer in MUDS: Hsing Ling (second from left) with the other top three finishers and Yusop (first from right) at the prize-giving ceremony.

Malakoff corporate affairs and external relations Yusop Rashid said the time has come for them to review the event.

“The event will undergo changes as we don’t want the same team to win every year. It discourages other participating universities from taking part in the competition. We will work out the changes,’’ said Yusop after the third and final series of the MUDS held at Universiti Malaya.

UPNM was awarded the Best and Top University Trophy as well as incentives worth RM3,000 for the highest cumulative result in the tri-legged (3.5km run – 11.4km bike – 3.5km run ) race.

A total of 621 athletes took part in the run-bike-run event and UPNM had an impressive representation of 183 participants.

Muhd Amirul Hafiz Aman (UPNM) crossed the finishing line first in the Men’s University category but it was Chan Jun Shen, a regular participant in the MUDS series, who emerged the overall winner with the highest accumulated points.

Jun Shen came in third in the opening series held at UPNM, first at the Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) run on Oct 1 and second at UM.

Jun Shen said it was a tough run but managed to pull away from the others in the bike event which is his favourite.

“I am basically a long distance runner but when running the short 3km distances, I simply have to put my best effort to stay ahead. My teammates were ecstatic about my win and helping UPNM emerge as the top university.

“We had trained hard for the event, knowing that the competition will be tough.

“Our collective efforts at winning this trophy has given the team the boost to prepare even harder to retain the title next year,’’ said Jun Shen.

In the Women’s university category, International Islamic Universiti Malaysia’s (IIUM), Fatin Nur Ain Ramli was the winner while UPNM’s Nurasyikin Masri was second.

In the women’s Open category Chung Hsing Ling, a first-time participant in the MUDS but a seasoned duathlete, was the winner while Mohd Aiman Mohd Halim was the best in the men’s Open event.

The UPNM teams battled out for the top three finishing in the Men’s relay event and in the Mixed relay event. UPNM finished first and second with UiTM taking third placing.