Indonesia stamped its dominance in weightlifting with another gold Saturday as Malaysia made waves at the swimming pool and inflicted a shock defeat on Thailand in football at the Southeast Asian Games.
Indonesia’s Okta Dwi Pramita, participating for the first time in the women’s 63—kilogram category, won with a total lift of 211. Her rival, Thi Thiet Nguyen, lifted the same weight but ended up with a silver because of her higher body weight of 62.75 kilograms.
The 1.46—meter (4 feet 8 inches)-tall Pramita ate a banana and drank water to lift her just above the 58 kilogram threshold. Indonesia already had another contestant in the under 58-kilogram category, and rules allow only one from each country.
Indonesia now has five gold medals from the seven weightlifting events contested so far. On Friday, Eko Yuli Irawan, an Indonesian goatherder-turned-weightlifter, set a meet record in the 62-kilogram category with a total lift of 300.
“I knew I was going to win when I saw the Vietnamese lift only 86 in snatch whereas I had 88 in my first try,” said the 23-year-old Pramita, who works for the government in her home province of Lampung, the centre of Indonesian weightlifting program.
She and Ngyuen lifted 94 on the third attempt of their snatch and 117 in clean and jerk.
Pramita said she was stronger than all her classmates in school and took up the sport with her father’s encouragement.
On Friday night, defending champion Thailand suffered a shock 2-1 defeat in football at the hands of Malaysia in the last match of Group A to crash out of the competition. This is the first time in 36 years that Thailand has failed to qualify for the semifinals of the SEA Games football competition.
Malaysia came back after falling behind in the 52nd minute.
“We actually should have settled the match at half-time through three tries but had to wait till the 81st minute to equalize,” Malaysian coach K. Rajagobal told reporters. The equalizer was scored by Mohammad Nasriq Baharom while the winner was scored by Ahmad Fakri Saarani in the 89th minute.
Malaysia will play Laos in a semifinal on Monday.
Also Friday, five of six swimming races produced records.
Siow Yi Ting of Malaysia, a day after her 24th birthday, swam the 100 meters breaststroke in 1:09.82 minutes, beating the 1:10.15 time set by Nicolette Teo of Singapore in 2007.
She also took part in the 4x100 meters freestyle relay where Malaysia won a bronze in a time of 3:51.40. Singapore won the gold in a meet record 3:45.73 while Thailand took the silver.
“I just relaxed my mind and swam hard, that’s how I did it,” said Siow, an undergraduate student at the University of Arkansas.
Games swimming records were also by Malaysia’s Daniel Bego in the men’s 100 meters freestyle, Vietnam’s Huu Viet Nguyen in the men’s 100 meters breaststroke and Malaysia’s Khoo Cai Lin in the women’s 400 meters freestyle.
