National wushu coach Li Hui (L) poses for a picture with brothers Mohd Sufi Shayiran (2nd L) and Mohd Adi Sya'rani Roslan (2nd R) after the duo won the duilian event at the 5th World Junior Wushu Championships in Antalya, Turkey on Monday. Courtesy of Li Hui
The national wushu team are awaiting confirmation on whether they have qualified for August's 2nd Summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Nanjing, China.
Brothers Mohd Sufi Shayiran and Mohd Adi Sya'rani Roslan ended the 5th World Junior Wushu Championships in Antalya, Turkey on Monday by finishing at the top of the podium in the duilian (duo sparring with broadsword and spear) event.
However, the duilian event is not listed on the qualification system for the YOG as wushu will be contested as a cultural event during the Games and will be run parallel to the multi-sport event.
According to national wushu coach Li Hui, this is due to the limit of gold medals for the sport resulting in duilian being omitted.
A top-six or better finish would have seen the brothers qualify for the August 16-28 event, and apart from duilian, they had other chances at qualifying for China.
Adi finished fifth in the 19-field event after scoring 9.32 points in the daoshu (single-edged swordplay) event. He also competed in the gunshu (long staff) event but finished in 18th place on 7.01 points
However, qualification has yet to determined since slots are determined based on combination of results: changquan (long sit), taijiquan (taiji fist) and Taijijian (taiji double-edged sword) all-round, nanquan (southern fist) and nangun (southern staff) all-round, daoshu (single-edged swordplay) and gunshu (long staff) all-round and jianshu (swordplay) and qiangshu (spear) all-round.
Sufi started out with the nangun (southern staff) event on Friday, where he finished eighth out of the 16 competitors after tallying 9.00 points.
He also competed in the nanquan (southern fist) event, where he claimed ninth with 8.80 points in the 16 athlete-field.
Meanwhile in the duilian event, the duo tallied 9.56 points to finish ahead of Ukraine's Artem Suong and Dmytro Kolyesnikov with 9.45 points.
The Hong Kong pair of Lau Tsz Wing and Zhuang Jiahong completed the podium a further 0.01 points back.
It was the second time the brothers recorded a podium finish on the international stage after bagging a silver medal during the 3rd Islamic Solidarity Games in Palembang, Indonesia, last September.
Li was delighted with the victory and said he is proud of his boys.
"This is the first time the wushu team has won a gold medal in a world championship," said Li in an interview with The Brunei Times after the win on Monday.
"I'm very happy with this result (and) it proves that Brunei wushu has the ability to get good results on the international stage," he added.
