When I was first recruited to help Majlis Sukan Wilayah Persekutuan's judo program for Sukma, I had assumed Wilayah had won gold medals before. I was shocked to find out that that wasn't the case at all. Wilayah had never won a single judo gold medal since Sukma began in the mid-1980s.

On Thursday, Aug 22, our long wait was finally over. Jairaj Singh, whom I've trained since he was 14 years old, won the gold medal for Wilayah at the +90kg division.

This is a historic first for Wilayah Persekutuan and hopefully, will pave the way for more gold medals in the future. This win would not have been possible with the strong support we got from En Azli, the judo officer who recruited me to join the MSWP program, and En Fariz who pushed hard for us to get the resources we needed to produce this gold medal. The Chon Buri training camp that we held shortly before Sukma was a very useful program that helped our players tremendously. After such a long wait and so much work, we finally did it.  

There are a lot of challenges ahead though. Sukma is only for those 21 and below. We need to find new players are our current players start to become over-age. This was Jairaj's last Sukma, for example. So, I need to find new people to start training for 2026.

Through the years, we have produced champions at the cadet and junior categories. Now, we've done it for Sukma as well. The next goal is to produce a national senior champion. That's a different kettle of fish. But I am confident we can do it.

We shall grown from strength to strength.