Malaysia’s fast-rising water-skiers Aiden and Adam Yoong Hanifah gave inspiring performances against dominant forces in the prestigious 2025 IWWF World Championships in Recetto, Italy.
The siblings, who brought glory to the country alongside their more illustrated older sister and captain of the national team Aaliyah in the recent Asian Championships, are destined to take on the mantle in the chase for gold medals at the 2025 SEA Games in Bangkok (Dec 9-20), and 2027 SEA Games hosted in Kuala Lumpur.
Following in the waves of multiple SEA Games and Asian Championships gold medallist Aaliyah, the duo demonstrated resilience, confidence, and belief in themselves, when faced with powerful opposition as they carved significant achievements against world superstars in a highly intensive world championships considered the biggest competition of the year.
Nineteen-year-old Aiden broke the Malaysian record for slalom with a personal-best performance of 2 buoys at a speed of 58kph on a 12.25m line in the open men’s preliminaries on Tuesday (Aug 26). Syahir Nasir, who achieved that in 2017 in Florida, held the previous record.
Aiden also equalled his older brother Alex Yoong’s Malaysian all-comers’ men’s slalom record of 2/58/12.25, set 31 years ago in 1994. The all-comers’ record included all tournaments homologated or not and organised by overseas federations in the 80s and 90s. Alex is also a former Malaysian Formula 1 driver.
While Aiden had notable individual success in slalom, a mistake in his toe pass saw him falling early in the water in tricks that led to him finishing in 24th position in the preliminaries on 4,420 points in a field of 35 athletes.
Aiden shrugged off the pressure at the World Championships when he said: “It has been a great experience for me. Super happy for breaking the national slalom record. For tricks, I had been too eager to get another PB (personal best) but fell early in my toe pass.
“I should have relaxed more, but I am happy to stand up for my hand pass and get a good enough score for the world championships. “In jump, that’s around the score I expected, so let’s hope for more to come in the future,” he added.
In the Open Men’s Series 3 jump preliminaries, Aiden jumped 35.1 metres. His personal best was 36.0m, set at the Asian Championships in Bangkok this year.
As for Adam, the 17-year-old, a bruised right knee sustained during practice on Day 1 of the training schedule forced him to withdraw from the Open Men’s Jump Serie 3 preliminaries. Adam, however, competed in slalom and tricks.
In slalom, Adam scored 4 buoys/58kph/14.25m line, while in tricks, he scored 3,650 points.
“I had a knock on my right knee on Day 1 of jump practice. It was the same ligament injury I sustained a year ago, and it took three months to recover,” explained Adam, who rose to fame at the 2017 SEA Games at the tender age of nine by bagging a gold medal in the individual tricks event.
“I thought my competition was over here. However, the Italian sports medicine doctor on standby examined my knee and said I was fit to slalom with a good knee brace. He prescribed me painkillers to ease the pain and tone down the swelling.”
He added he borrowed a knee brace and slalomed as well as performed tricks.
“I count myself lucky to have benefitted from this experience. I hope in my next World championship I will have better results,” he said.
In women’s water-skiing, Aaliyah Yoong finished in ninth position in the slalom Serie 5 preliminaries amongst 26 competitors. The 22-year-old Aaliyah, who aspires to be a sports psychologist, scored 2.50 buoys at a speed of 55kph on a 12m line.
Two more events are lined up for Aliyah – Open Jump Serie1 and Serie 2 Tricks preliminary. She is strongly tipped to get into the final for jump and perhaps tricks as well.
She will jump in serie 1 preliminary tonight and trick in serie 2 preliminary tomorrow (Saturday) night.
The finals are all scheduled to be held this Sunday 31 Aug.
