PETALING JAYA, Malaysia, September 11. MALAYSIA’s top star Yi Ting Siow is close to calling it a career after quitting the Malaysian National Team this week according to the Star Online.
Yi Ting, the first female swimmer to compete for Malaysia in three Olympic Games, left the national team this week with just a few months before Malaysia’s top meet of the year at the Southeast Asian Games.
Yi Ting has been a Malaysian stalwart, having swum for her country international for more than a decade. She first made the Olympics in 2000 at the Sydney Olympics, then made both the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing teams.
Yi Ting, now 27, is not only battling the weight of more than 10 years at the world-class level, but also with a neck injury.
“Yi Ting came to see me and said she wanted to stop swimming. She feels that she has lost the motivation to swim although the SEA Games is just around the corner,” Malaysian swimming federation secretary Edwin Chong told the Star Online. “It is not easy at her age to cope with the intensity of training and she feels it is hard to get motivated at this point. She also has a growth on her neck and it is slowing her when she does the breaststroke. She can feel the pain on her neck as her arms are stroking the water. She was considering surgery and I told her to get the necessary treatment from the National Sports Institute. I also told her to consider going for her last SEA Games in Myanmar and that no one would fault her if she does not come back with a gold medal. But I think she has made up her mind. Anyway, she has done more than enough. She continued to swim for the country and delivered medals after she completed her university studies in the United States.”
Yi Ting competed at the NCAA Division I level for Wisconsin before transferring to Arkansas to complete her degree in Arts and Sculpture before heading back to Malaysia to train.
Star Online Article