Azroy Hazal Wafie Izhar Ahmad was not happy with the Malaysian Weightlifting Federation's (PABM) decision of not participating in any international competition for one year.
The drastic self-imposed ban came after four national weightlifters, including Fazrul Azrie Mohdad who won a bronze medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, tested positive for a banned substance.
It means no Malaysian weightlifters will be able to compete in the likes of Asian Games and the World Weightlifting Championships, reducing their chances of qualifying for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.
Azroy, who broke two Commonwealth Games records en route to winning a gold medal, hoped that Podium Programme athletes will be exempted from the ban.
"I was sad and aggrieved to hear about it yesterday," he told Astro Arena on Thursday.
"[The ban] affects me because I will not be able to participate at the World Championships to collect points to qualify for the Olympics.
"Aznil [Bidin] and I have our own personal goal, which is to enter the Olympics by collecting individual points, not by going through the wild card system.
"For wild card, only one national athlete will be selected, so I want to collect as many points as possible."
As announced by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), there are six qualifying tournaments for the Tokyo Olympics and each athlete needs to compete in at least three to collect qualifying points.
"We already began our preparations for the Asian Games and were about to have a training camp in Vietnam," Azroy added.
Seng Foo Lee
Fri Jun 01 2018
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