Terengganu Young Riders

The young riders with their support team and some of the Malakoff riders (white & green jerseys)

...and after I asked for riders under 18 only

I've gone on, and on, and on about the young riders from Terengganu. Finally managed to find the pix of these young people, although not all of them.

When we set off from Gombak there were a few young riders with us as well including Rahimi who I've posted on earlier.

Once in Temerloh, Ishak joined the ride with a few young riders who had cycled from Kemaman the day before. I don't have pix of this team - if anyone does please email to malakoff.cr@gmail.com or post a link in the comments.

In Kemaman another group of young people joined us, with their own support team of parents in tow. They had found out about the ride through Ishak and the Kemaman Teachers' Cycling Club.

So on the final day, the Malakoff Charity Ride, numbered more than 120 riders, and had a much expanded support team too.

All these riders are under 18 years, most are between 12 to 16 years.

Not all of them are from loaded families but they have the interest and the passion to ride.

You know that they have been training hard from their tans which have gone past golden brown to the burnt to a crisp level.

And surprise, surprise a number of them are girls, and they were as fast as the boys, and a lot faster than most of the men aside from the pros (no offense to any of the male riders). Anyway this was a ride and not a race, so placign doesn't matter.

But back to the young people. Terengganu seems to be the place for raising professional riders.

Is there a cycling academy in Terengganu? Would anyone be interested to set one up there? If the parents of the young riders are an indication, it should be easy to get support for such an academy.

East Coast Mee Goreng

Mee Goreng, the fried noodle, famous Malaysian breakfast and tea break dish for decades.

The recent Malakoff Charity Ride 2008 stop at Temerloh & Kemaman, had chance to taste the authentic East Coast Mee Goreng of which so memorable until today.

Had the same dish for past few days at hotel meetings, eating out at night, realised that the taste of Mee Goreng here still hard to beat the East Coast style. Talking about the simplicity of ingredient preparation, frying the noodle, mixing it with chilli paste or sambal, stir it with sawi and then to serving, worth drolling while typing this.

Anyone who beg to differ?

Haidar the Kemaman Export

Name: Ahmad Haidar bin Anuawar
DOB: April 25, 1986
Height: 169cm, Weight: 59-61kg
Siblings: 1st of 6 siblings, 4 boys and 2 girls

Ahmad Haidar is a typical village boy from the suburban area of Kemaman. His passion for cycling started as a young boy who was impressed with his uncle's shiny racing bike. He would normally take out the bike for joyride only to be scolded later by his uncle for his misdeed. But this didn't dampened his spirit to one day ride a bike of his own and to earn a living doing what he liked best - cycling.

When he was in Primary school, armed with his trusted bike, which was remotely a racing bike like the ones he owns now, he joined several local kampung races aptly called Race Nyamuk("Mosquito race") and won almost every time, much to his mother's annoyance. Of course every mother would like the best for their children and all she had ever wanted was Haidar to excel in his studies. But seeing that his interest was more to cycling than studying, she relented and just prayed for the best for her first child. Eventually his uncle saw his talent, too and supported this passion of his.

During his Fourth Form, he started to meddle into road bikes and road racing. Then when he was in his Fifth Form, he entered Sukan Remaja which was organized by Sport Excel and he was officially discovered. There was no turning back for him. Subsequently he entered Sukma under Pahang's ticket. It was during 2004 Sukma in Negeri Sembilan when he was noticed by Rahim, who is currently coaching LeTua.

Rahim told Haidar that he has the potential that he was looking for in a cyclist and coincidentally they were looking for talents to form a cycling club called LeTua. Haidar didn't give second thoughts about it and was taken under Rahim's wing. Their trainings were mainly done around Subang area where they lived in the nearby Kg Melayu Subang.

Donning LeTua's jersey, he competed in several Asian cycling tours and proved himself in the international circuit by standing on the podium in some stages, namely third placing in Stage 7 of Tour Indonesia in 2005, Stage 9(Tour Indonesia, 2006), and first place wins in Stage 3 of 2007 Tour of Siam and Stage 3 of Tour of Hong Kong in 2007.

For this Kemaman born cyclist, his favourite routes includes Fraser's Hill(with a compulsory detour in Bentong for the famous Kow Po ice cream and ais kacang(shaved ice)) and Genting Highlands. The longer the climb, the better for him to build his strength. He also would like to see more youngsters participate in cycling and hopes that the cycling scene in Malaysia will stay alive and more new talents will be discovered and nurtured.

**Haidar uses a Time road bike, frame size 50 with Campagnolo Record groupset

**written by Aini Zakaria