Pandelela Rinong Pamg exclusive: Carrying Malaysia's hopes and shutting out the critics
The two-time Olympic medallist spoke to Olympics.com about taking advice from squash legend Nicol David on dealing with the pressure to make Malaysia proud.
Badminton and football capture a lot of sporting attention in Malaysia. Then, once a year, diving catapults to the forefront too whenever a World Championships, Olympic Games, or Asian Games rolls around.
That's mostly thanks to the efforts of two-time Olympic medallist Pandelela Rinong Pamg and her teammates, whose success keeps the minority sport in the spotlight.
But with that comes scrutiny too. Such as the type Rinong experienced when, suffering from illness and injury, she under-performed at last year's World Aquatics Championships and failed to obtain a Paris 2024 Olympic qualifying quota.
"It's good that there is attention on diving especially, because normally people watch badminton or football," Pandelela told Olympics.com exclusively a few months after the World Championships, at the 2023 Asian Games.
"If they have something to say about diving, it means they're watching diving. But whatever is negative, I take it as something that fires me up."
The reaction after the World Championships led Rinong to turn to a retired Malaysian squash legend for advice.
"There's a lot of responsibility, definitely, especially as a Malaysian athlete. I even asked Datuk Nicol David, and she said it's been like that since her time," Pandelela shared.
"I got a lot of good advice from her after my World Championship outing. I use it as my motivation to work harder."
Squash legend Nicol David has been giving Pandelela Rinong advice on dealing with expectations as a Malaysian medal hopeful.
Pandelela on bouncing back from injury and being inspired by Chinese
The 2024 World Aquatics Championships are a rare world meet in an Olympic year, and provide the final chance for divers to earn Paris 2024 quotas. The top four eligible pairs in synchronised events and the top 12 eligible divers in individual events will obtain their quotas in Doha.
It's a chance for redemption for Pandelela, who missed out on the semi-finals for the first time in her career after picking up both illness and injury in a training camp before last July's world event.
"I was also quite surprised that I had urticaria when I arrived in Japan," Pandelela recalled. "It really affected my confidence, my health, because I had all these bumps and rashes all over my face and body. I couldn't train for a few days, and it definitely affected my training, my performance and definitely my competition as well.
"Besides that I also suffered a shoulder injury two weeks before going to the world championships. I tried my best to overcome it and dive, even though the result is not what I had hoped for. But I take it as a lesson and also a blessing in disguise."
However, the diving queen made a successful return at the Hangzhou Asian Games, winning two bronze medals.
Diving is a physical sport which takes a battering on athletes' bodies, and for Pandelela it's all a part and parcel of practising the sport she has done for the best part of two decades.
"When we are diving, training before the competition, I see all of the tape especially on the Chinese divers. Even though they are far younger than me, the tape on their bodies is not less than on mine," she shared of her admiration of divers from the People's Republic of China, whose level is considered the best in the world.
"So I know diving is a very demanding sport, it's a high impact sport and you can get injuries easily. The difference is everyone takes the challenge differently. So I'm trying to get inspired by these Chinese divers."
How Pandelela Rinong relaxes away from training, and her future plans
With so much pressure on Rinong, who has been named an "National Unity Icon" in Malaysia for her ability to bring Malaysians of different backgrounds together through her sporting success, how does she relax?
Keeping mentally healthy, she said, is important for her. And there's one main way she does so.
"By going travelling," she giggled. "I think that's the millennial thing. I saw on Instagram, how we cope with our mental health is either we go to therapy, see a sports psychologist, or we travel."
But her full focus is on making it to Paris. There are still World Championship and even Olympic medals to be won.
Pandelela would also like to try something else before she calls it quits: high diving, which makes occasional appearances at the World Championships.
"I saw them a few years ago, in Budapest in 2017. It was very scary, I've never went up to the high diving (platform). I think it's 27m, but I want to one day.
"I have a lot of respect towards them because 10m is already very high for me. And I can only imagine the impact on their body as well."
As her career starts to enter its latter stages, Pandelela is starting to look, ever so slowly, towards the future.
"For now, I try to focus just on training and try not to distract myself doing a lot of things. But there's something in mind," she revealed.
"I'm just writing down the notes on what I'm going to do. Yeah, definitely my senior Datuk Leong Mun Yee is showing the way, she's doing it," she said of her former diving partner, who is an assistant coach with the national team and also owns a diving academy.
"I'm just going to emulate her when I'm not diving anymore."