BRUNEI’S fastest man Md Fakhri Ismail has been given the honour of carrying the national flag during the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics at the Maracana Stadium today (7am Brunei time on Saturday).
Fakhri is set to compete in the men’s 100-metre event at the Aug 5-21 Olympics.
He is the current national record holder of the men’s 100m record with a time of 10.59 seconds which he set during the heats at the 28th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Singapore in June last year.
The 25-year-old also created history after becoming the first Bruneian to advance to the heats of the 100m event at the World Athletics Championships by clocking a time of 10.73s in the preliminary round at the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing.
It eventually set him up to run in the same heat with Jamaican sprint King Usain Bolt.
Maizurah Abd Rahim is the other Bruneian sprinter at the Olympics where she will compete in the women’s 200m event.
Shuttler Jaspar Yu Woon Chai is also creating headlines by becoming the first Bruneian badminton player to get a berth at the Games.
The runners are competing under universality places which the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has opened to countries which have no qualified athletes.
Yu, meanwhile, was awarded one of the three Tripartite Commission Invitation Places by the International Olympics Council (IOC) in May to compete in the men’s singles event. He is the lowest ranked player in the competition at 407.
