Minister of Youth and Sports Ahmad Faizal Azumu has said that Malaysia has expressed extreme indignation regarding the cancellation of the gold medal of the national shot put champion Muhammad Ziyad Zolkefli. He said that the Ministry has lodged a strong protest before the organisers
He said the Malaysian Contingent officers included all the evidence, including closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage inside and outside the waiting room (call room).
” Protest has been submitted, Including all CCTV evidence in the call room and outside of the call room,” he said soon after Ziyad Zolkefli’s gold was cancelled by the authority in Tokyo.
Minister also informed that Malaysian Contingent officials are in talks with Tokyo Paralympic Games over the matter.
He gave the impression that Malaysia may still have hope to get the medal back because the protests by Ukrainian athletes are very weak.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”in” dir=”ltr”>Counter protest masih dalam proses. Kita sama2 doakan <a href=”https://t.co/oIBTBy4NVq”>pic.twitter.com/oIBTBy4NVq</a></p>— Faizal Azumu (@PejaOfPerak) <a href=”https://twitter.com/PejaOfPerak/status/1432690529041457158?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>August 31, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Meanwhile, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin also slammed the decision. In a reply tweet on the Paralympic official Twitter page, he who once headed the Ministry of Youth and Sports described the action as very embarrassing.
“This tarnishes his reputation and goes against the spirit of the Paralympics. If it stems from a delay in entering the waiting room, you should not have allowed him to contest from the very beginning.
“Gold medals and world records confiscated,” Khairy wrote.