Diver Kimberly believes its not too late to raise difficulty rating for Sea Games

KUALA LUMPUR - Can national women’s diver Kimberly Bong raise her degree of difficulty ahead of the 2023 Sea Games in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, next month?

While Kimberly is racing against the clock to do so, she remained optimistic that nothing is impossible to perform at least a 3.0 difficulty rating in the women’s 3 metres (m) springboard at the biennial Games.

After having performed in the range of 1.0 to 2 1/2 degrees of difficulty before, the Sarawakian diver admitted that she wanted to challenge herself by trying out new dives so as to earn more points from the judges.

"It might take quite some time for me to do so but I am working towards that and my coach also encouraged me to do so.

"For me, I know my body well. So, I think it’s not a problem to increase the degree of difficulty in a short period,” she told reporters after winning gold in the women’s 3m springboard at the 58th Malaysia Invitational Age Group (MIAG) Diving Championships here, today.

As such, the 2021 SEA Games silver medallist in the women’s 1m springboard had set the target to execute with at least two new dives out of five rounds in Phnom Penh.

On her performance today, Kimberly said she was nervous about today’s event as this was her first assignment since November.

"I am glad that I managed to overcome my nervousness. This is my first and last tournament before the SEA Games so it was not bad at all,” she said.

In the meantime, the sports management student from the University of Malaya hoped that she will not sustain any serious injury ahead of the Games.

Earlier, Kimberly, who represented the national team collected 280.55 points to come out tops while her teammate, Ong Ker Ying had to settle for silver with 252.80 points and Alycia Lim from Singapore completed the podium with 171.30 points.

The three-day tournament will conclude tomorrow (April 3).- BERNAMA