I’m finally back to updating you on my racing again. This last friday we made a quick trip to Erfurt, Germany for our final race prior to going to the big one in Beijing. We left Valencia, Spain, our current training base on Wednesday morning right after our gym session. You would think a trip from Spain to Germany would be a relative short flight but the whole trip from hotel to hotel took 12 hours! The actual flight was just under 3 hours but there was a two hour drive to the airport in Spain, followed by a three and a half hour drive from the airport in Germany. Plus it didn’t help that the navigation system in the rented van was giving us some wrong directions! Technology can bit a pain sometimes!

We arrived in Erfurt totally exhausted. After a light supper I took a nice shower and fell in bed at just past midnight! Luckily we had one day to recover from the trip.

The track in Erfurt is an outdoor partially covered 250m concret track. Previously in its place was a 333m uncovered concrete track but with all the international events being on 250m I guess they saw it was time to replace it with this one.  It was a good looking thing but when we got on it we were surprised at how bumpy it was considering it was only 4 months new. I guess not every country has the super machines that can make silky smooth tracks like in Japan. No one can beat those guys for perfection and precision.

Well the bumpyness along with the cool weather made for some slow times in the morning 200m sprint qualifying times. I had some bad stomach problems the past few days and perhaps that had a part in me being a bit off what I expected.  I went 10.90 to qualify 19th out of 40 sprinters. The fastest time was Chris Hoy in a blazing 10.30. My teammate Azizul went really well to qualify 6th in a 10.56. My first round was a three up against Shane Kelly and Adam Ptachnik of the Czech Republic. I tried to control it and bring up the pace but on the back straight with a lap and a half, Kelly attacked hard and I was too late to close it. In my rep I had a four up and at that point I had such a bad stomach ache that I couldnt even finish my sprint.  I was hurting.

In the team sprint qualifying, I did everything I could to not let me teammates down and luckily we did alright and qualified 3rd, just missing out on 2nd by a few hundredths of a second to Australia.

Luckily for me, there was a 4 hour break and I could take a much need rest and hope that my stomach would get better. The afternoon session started off with the team sprint final against Greece for 3rd place. We did well by doing pretty much the exact same time to beat them handily.  Germany won against the Aussies.

My final race was the keirin. I wasn’t expecting too much due to the bad day I was having. So I surprised msyelf and probably my coach, John when I won my qualifying heat against two German teammates to make the final. In the final the Aussies and Germans were well represented by the duos of Shane Kelly/Ryan Bayley and Carsten Bergemann/Michael Seidenbecher. The Greeks had World Championships bronze medalist Christos Volikakis and Malaysia had me. I drew the first position but as the gun went off, Ryan (Ray as everyone likes to call him) wanted it so I gladly let him have it. I was in the ideal position of sitting in 2nd with Kelly on my wheel and Volikakis shadowing him.  The two Germans were at the back.  As the motor pulled off they made an attempted attack which I covered with a right hand hook!  Take that!  hehe. I kept them off but felt another attack coming with 200m to go so I made my move and passed Ray. Coming out of turn four I felt someone on my right but I held it on the line to win by uh I dont know how much because I was so excited. All I know was that I won and I couldn’t believe it expecially after the horrible day I just had.  This is a much needed win for me.  More so for my head than anything else. I’ve had a tough last two years and getting this win over such a good field gives me back the confidence in myself.  Afterward a lot of people congratulated me. I got a bag of drinks and a bouquet of flowers which I threw to the crowd as did my victory lap complete with people clapping and victory music playing over the loud speakers.  It was an awesome feeling!

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time and had to pack up straight away to make our 5am flight!  It was 10pm and we had to leave the hotel by 11pm for the 3 hour drive back to the airport.  We arrived back to our hotel in Valencia at 10am.  We were totally exhausted as you can imagine and slept practically the whole day!

I hope this is the start of all the good things to come in the next month. I’ll try my best to stay motivated to blog more about my month leading up to Beijing. Wish me all the best!

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson

Keep steadily before you the fact that all true success depends at last upon yourself.
Theodore T. Hunger

by Lim Teik Huat

PETALING JAYA: One of his wishes for the year has been granted and track cyclist Josiah Ng now hopes to nail down the remaining ones in the Beijing Olympics next month.

Wedding bells will be ringing soon for Josiah, whose public relations manager Kim Ong has accepted his proposal for marriage while they were on vacation in London after the World Track Championships in Manchester on April 1.

The wedding is likely to be held on June 27 next year. In the meantime, the 27-year-old will not lose sight of his goals in the Olympics.

Josiah became the pride of the nation at the last Games in Athens when he bounced back from adversity to finish among the world’s best riders in the keirin event.

On the eve of the competition, coach Mark Whitehead abandoned Josiah after he finished 11th in the sprints because of a clash of egos with a former coach, Frederic Magne. But Josiah showed great mental composure to qualify for the final and eventually finished fifth in a closely contested race.

In Beijing, Josiah will get the chance to finish off what he narrowly missed out on and he will not be alone this time.

While Josiah qualified automatically by virtue of his ranking among the top 11 in the world, Malaysia also secured an extra berth in keirin. And youngster Azizul Hasni Awang, a two-time Asian champion in the discipline, will get to throw in his challenge.

After winning a total of eight World Cup and two Asian Games medals, winning an Olympic medal will be the highest point in Josiah’s glittering career.

“I’m not giving up on my dream as anything can happen in the Olympics. Anyone who makes the final has a shot at getting one and that is the purpose of me training hard each day,” said Josiah via e-mail from his training base in Valencia.

“That would be great if I achieve this as I will be settling down soon but there is also something I hope to achieve.

“One of my biggest dreams is to carry the flag for my country in the opening ceremony of the Olympics. I hope I will get the chance to do it in Beijing. I hear that the honour is always given to the country’s best performer of the last Olympics.”

Josiah was the flag-bearer for the Malaysian contingent at the 2006 Doha Asian Games.

Malaysia have also made the cut for the team sprint and Josiah, Azizul and the other two track cyclists, Rizal Tisin and Mohd Edrus Yunus, are in Valencia for their last lap of Olympic preparations.

“We have settled down and training is going on well here. We will probably leave directly from here to Beijing,” he said.

Source: http://thestar.com.my/sports/story.asp?file=/2008/7/10/sports/21784074&sec=sports

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11:40 PM PDT on Wednesday, July 2, 2008By MIRJAM SWANSON
The Press-Enterprise

The kid just didn’t get it.

He’d sneak out on Saturdays to race his bike, disobeying his family’s strict Seventh-day Adventist beliefs. He’d spend most of his time at friends’ houses. He didn’t take his schoolwork at Redlands High seriously enough.

And he just didn’t listen.

Janet Ng can’t recall how many times she lectured Josiah, the eldest of three children in a medically inclined immigrant family from Malaysia. Time after time, she’d warn him that the future he was carving out for himself wasn’t acceptable.

“Josiah,” she’d say, “it’s going to be really hard to put a roof over your head with cycling.”

But Josiah Ng wouldn’t budge.

Story continues below

Special to The Press-Enterprise

Josiah Ng’s image is plastered on commuter trains in his family’s native country, Malaysia, where he’s a celebrated athlete.

And it wasn’t just his parents who felt the urge to dissuade him. Other boys taunted the small cyclist, sneering, “What? Are you gonna go pro, Josiah?”

And still, Josiah Ng never wavered.

Cliff Hammer, the father of U. S. Olympian Sarah Hammer and a longtime supporter, likened the world-class determination of the young Loma Linda rider to that of Thomas Edison, who once told somebody, “I didn’t fail, I found 2,000 ways how not to make a light bulb. I only need to find one way to make it work.”

“He always had the vision,” Cliff Hammer said. “And he wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way.”

Josiah Ng, it turned out, absolutely got it.

Seeing is Believing

Ng — whose name is pronounced “ing” — says there are three “visions” he’s wanted to fulfill since his youth.

No. 1: He wanted to race at an Olympics.

He’s headed to his second. At the Athens Games four years ago, Ng finished fifth in the keirin, his specialty, missing a medal in the dangerous, adrenaline-charged track cycling event by a flash.

No. 2: He wanted to be able to say he’d raced professionally in Japan, where keirin is biggest. He did, and did so well he used his winnings to buy a condo in Torrance, sort of an I-told-you-so to his now-proud mom.

“He always told me he would prove me wrong,” Janet Ng said. “I really thank God that He has given Josiah that kind of motivation.”

No. 3: He wanted to be an Olympic flag-bearer.

Ng, 28, is the likely candidate to lead the 30-some Malaysian athletes into Beijing’s National Stadium during the opening ceremonies Aug. 8.

“That’s gonna be a big deal,” Ng said recently by phone from Torrance, a day before he left for Australia, where he trains with his trade team and fellow Malaysian riders.

“All of the eyes in the world would be on me for that instant. And you know they always zoom in on the flag bearer and say a sentence or two: ‘He was the best Malaysian finisher at the last Olympics, he grew up cycling in the U. S. …’ “

Star Power

Fortunately for him, Ng is comfortable with the attention, because more and more of it is coming his way.

Since 2004, when he was chosen as Malaysia’s sportsman of the year, his name has been automatically identifiable in the country. Now, with his image plastered on commuter trains and magazine covers, he is becoming more recognizable, too.

“Being somewhat ‘Americanized,’ he doesn’t really care what people think of him, or if people know it’s him when he’s in Malaysia,” wrote Kim Ong, Ng’s fianceé, in an e-mail. “He’s just him, and he likes doing what he likes.”

Ong also is well-known in Malaysia, where her popular blog has made her an Internet celebrity. It was the ‘net that brought the two together.

“I picked up a copy of The (Malaysian) Sun featuring Josiah on it and wondered who this hunk was,” Ong said, recalling the big FedEx ad she spotted.

Said Ng: “She didn’t know much about sports so she Googled me. She’s pretty handy on the computer, after all.”

Remembered Ong: “I found his Web site and decided to drop him a ‘good luck’ comment on his guestbook.”

Ng: “So I linked to her blog and thought, ‘What a cute girl!’ Then I responded, and we sent a few e-mails and text messages, had a few phone conversations, and then some three-hour daily phone conversations …”

Ong: “One thing led to another and we found ourselves eventually meeting up. The rest is history. We never looked back. He never hesitated.”

Hooked on Keirin

If there’s an event on the planet that forbids hesitation, it’s Ng’s keirin, which has been an Olympic sport since 2000.

At the Games, it’s an eight-lap, six-rider race. Competitors trail a pacer whose speed gradually increases from 15 mph to 30. Then, with about 700 meters to go, the pacer leaves the track and all heck breaks loose as competitors fight to be the first one across the finish line.

Or, as Ng describes it: “It’s like roller derby with bikes. It’s Santa Anita racetrack with bikes. It’s short-track speedskating with bikes. It’s anything can happen.”

It’s the race that suited Ng immediately.

As a junior rider, he found that he excelled at the criteriums, road cycling’s shorter, snappy, multi-lap races.

Then, when he found his way to the track, Ng found himself gravitating toward the shorter, more tactical races until he found the most tactical of them.

“I was hooked; it was like a self-propelled roller coaster,” Ng said.

And he was good at it.

“Josiah has always been a very controlled sprinter,” said Redlands’ Johnny Bairos, an Olympian who introduced Ng to track cycling in 1996.

“He knows exactly what he’s going to do and why he’s going to do it, and then he only makes moves he needs to make to gain an advantage. There are guys who like to fight for fighting’s sake, but Josiah does everything for winning’s sake.”

For all of his insatiable desire and natural affinity for the keirin, Ng also benefited from the discipline and healthy vegetarian eating habits instilled by his parents, who have become big fans. Josiah’s father, Dr. Andy Ng, even bikes now.

Andy and Janet will be in Beijing with their other two children, who are studying medicine and nursing, to watch the family cyclist go for gold on Aug. 15 and 16.

Ng’s got a good shot. He was the world’s top-ranked keirin racer from 2002 to 2003 and then again from 2005 to 2006, and he’s an eight-time World Cup medalist. All that success has spawned a growing generation of track cyclists in Malaysia, including 19-year-old Azizul Hasni Awang, a fellow keirin contender.

Malaysia has announced that it will pay RM 1 million — or about $300,000 — to its first athlete to take gold.

“That’s exciting news, but to be honest with you, that doesn’t change anything,” said Ng, who gets support from the Malaysian government and from sponsors such as Nike.

“The gold is just as attractive with or without the incentive. I’ve already dedicated my life to achieving the highest honors at the Olympic Games. The money would just be icing on the cake.”

Indeed, marveled Andy Ng, when considering his son’s passion for the sport that’s made him a star in their native land.

“He’d do it even if he wasn’t paid,” Andy Ng said. “He’s always just loved it.”

Some pics from Revolution 3 race.

Photos courtesy of Liz. Thanks!

Here’s a photo I dug up from four years ago!  I had just gotten silver in the keirin World Cup in Manchester.  It was a dream to be up on the podium with two of my childhood idols.  Florian Rousseau (right) is now the head coach of the successful French team.  Shane Kelly (center)  will be going to his 5th Olympics.  I will be going to my 2nd Olympics.  Wish us all good luck…but of course wish me the most good luck!  

Thursday night was my first race since the world championships at the end of March.  The Revolution 3 was to be a good indication of where our team was at in our preperations for Beijing.  This race  was organized specifically as an official send off for the Aussie Olympic team and pitted the our Malaysian team against them. 

The format was a bit different than the usual champhionship even as this is designed with the spectators in mind.  The evening started off with a live Chinese lion dance ensemble complete with the costumed dansers, drums, gongs, and firework effects!  It was loud and very entertaining.  They even had kids on bikes with cute little lion costumes riding around the track.   The stadium was packed with a full house of about 4000 people.  They even had about 50 or so tables set up on the infield.  Those who wanted to spend the money were treated to a wine and dine experience! 

Our race program consisted of keirin, sprints and a one off team sprint against the Aussies.  First off was the keirin.  My heat included Mark French and Shane Kelly.   Since it was a compact program, they cut out all repacharges and only the first two went straight to the six up final.  The rest were eliminated.  I wasn’t switched on mentally and unfortunately finished third.   In the sprints,  my first round was a three up against two Aussies, both named Scott!  The format was also sudden death.  Winner only to the next round.  The first Scott, took off at two laps to go and I chased, keeping an eye on Scott Sunderland behind.  I caught the first Scott out of turn four and managed to hold off the other Scott.  

My next ride was against my training partner, Mark French.  He drew first position and I figured I’d try to come around out of turn four but didn’t have as much gas as him.  That was it, I was eliminated. 

My teammate fared much better.  Azizul, or Jojo as he likes being called managed to make the final against Ryan Bayley and Mark French.  He gave them a good run for their money but finished 3rd.  In the Keirin he did well to beat the whole Aussie team, taking a spectacular win!  My other teammate, Edrus did a great job by giving him a big lead out.  Way to go Azizul and Edrus!  These guys have just improved so much over the past year.  They are a real asset to Malaysian sport and great fun to train with! 

The final race was the much anticipated team sprint ride off.  Azizul was to lead out for the first time.  I would go second and Rizal would anchor us.  The Aussie line up was Daniel Ellis, Mark Frenchy, followed by Ryan Bayley.  This will most probably be their formation in Beijing. 

Azizul start me off well.  He doesn’t have a super fast first sixty meters which is alright with me because neither do I.  But out of turn two, he just hit the afterburners and I had to chase hard to stay on his wheel.  I pulled off my lap without any trouble and when I pulled up, I realized that we were ahead of the Aussie team!  Rizal did a wonderful job to hold Ryan off and we had won!  Our time was 45.55 and theirs was 45.59.  You can only imagine our joy at beating a team of that calibre.  This will give us more confidence that we will be a team to be reckoned with in the future.  I’m sure it will take us sometime before we’ll be winning international accolades but we’re moving in the right direction. 

This morning I had a cup of coffee to get me going on my road ride. Thing is I don’t usually drink coffee. I was brought up in a very health conscious background. My father is a health doctor and my mother is a registered dietitian. In fact, I was raised as a vegetarian and only started eating meat in 2006. I decided to go carnivore because I was prone to getting sick during my tough training cycles. As a result, I got a blood test and it revealed that I was low in Iron, creatine, and a few other things that are found in meat so I decided to give it a go. I do love the vegetarian diet though but I think that it’s pretty tough to be a sprinter type athlete fueled by tofu. My mom of course begs to differ.

Anyway, back to the coffee. I drank it because someone bought it for me and I thought eh what the heck I’ll give it a go to see what all the buzz is all about. And buzz I did….all day! I felt like I wasn’t even in my own body as I was shaking. It didn’t feel right even though I had a decent track session in the afternoon. I’ve finally come off my caffeine buzz 8 hours later and I’m relieved to be back to normal again. I think its because my body is just not used to the caffeine or that was one strong cup of coffee. Regardless, I think I’ll just stick to my regular hot chocolate or orange juice at the cafe from now on thankuverymuch!