Malaysian shuttler Lee Chong Wei was hailed as a national hero Monday despite his bitterly disappointing finals loss to China’s Lin Dan, which deprived the nation of its first Olympic gold. The silver medal was Malaysia’s best result in 12 years at the Olympics and the best achievement by a singles player.

Malaysians followed Lee’s progress at the Beijing Olympics with enthusiasm, hoping he could break a drought for the country, which had not won an Olympic medal since 1996 and has never claimed gold. Since Malaysia started taking part in the Olympics in 1956 at Melbourne, it has won two silver medals, including Chong Wei’s, and two bronze — all from badminton.
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Michael Phelps became the greatest Olympian of all time Wednesday winning two gold medals in the space of an hour to lift his career total to an unprecedented 11 on his charge to Olympic immortality.

As world records continued to tumble in the pool, Phelps passed the halfway point in his drive to be the first person to win eight golds at one Games when he blitzed the 200m butterfly final and led the US 4×200 freestyle relay team.

The champion American has now won five gold medals in Beijing, all of them in world record time, to go with the six he won in Athens.
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Daniel Bego broke his own national 200m freestyle record in the Olympic heats tonight, clocking 1:50.92s to better his previous mark of 1:51.05s at the national ‘Water Cube’ aquatics centre.

He finished sixth out of seven in the race which was dominated by American swimmer Michael Phelps.

Daniel, who is from Sarawak, holds two other national marks for the 100m butterfly and the 200m butterfly, his remaining events in his Olympics debut.

He is down to race in the 200m butterfly tomorrow night with hopes of making the semi-finals. He has a best of 1:59.40s.

In the women’s 400m freestyle, Khoo Cai Lin faded out, finishing sixth in her heat in 4:23.37s, off her season best of 4:18.20s.
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Kuala Lumpur was 13th of the 51 cities to be visited by the Olympic torch on its way to Beijing. The final 31 of these venues are all in China, on the torch’s domestic tour of this year’s Olympic Games host country. This should rekindle the Olympic flame into a semblance of glory by the time it gets to its final destination, after an acrimonious world tour during which this symbol of universal amity in sport was subjected to indignities from protesters expressing solidarity with the people of Tibet.

The Malaysian leg of the Olympic Torch Relay went on relatively smoothly yesterday, except for four people, including a family of three, who were detained briefly for displaying pro-Tibet sentiments. Those detained were a Japanese couple in their 30s and their 5-year-old son and an English woman in her 40s. They were released after being questioned by the police for several hours.
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