Akmal Danial's Triple Gold Crowns a Record-Wrecking Games

Sukan Malaysia XXII gave the archery record book its heaviest week in years. Ten SUKMA marks were broken across seven days at INSPEN Kajang and an eleventh equalled — in the individual rounds, the team rounds and the mixed team. But the tournament's defining figure was not simply a record-setter. He was the only one who turned records into a full set of gold.

Muhammad Akmal Danial bin Baharuddin left Kajang with three gold medals from four events. Terengganu topped the medal table on the strength of it. And behind him, the week produced a recurve competition in which the archers who shot best over seventy-two arrows and the archers who won the finals were, with one exception, entirely different people.

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Akmal Danial: Three Golds, Three Records

Akmal Danial opened the compound competition on 17 August with 351 over the first distance, equalling a 36-arrow record Sabah's Eugenius Loh Foh Sun had held since 2018. He closed on 700 — a number no compound archer had reached at these Games, and eight clear of the 692 Afiq Zufar set in 2024. That score took the qualification gold medal.

He then won the individual final against Pulau Pinang's Lee Meng Zhe. And alongside Muhamad Bilal Mubeen and Muhammad Aiman Syafiq — with whom he had already set a team qualification record of 2,087 — he took the compound men's team title, Terengganu beating Sarawak 230–227 in a final decided by three points across four ends.

Three golds from four entries. The one that got away was the compound mixed team, where Terengganu finished eighth.

One From Four

Four qualification gold medals were awarded, one per individual event, and all four went to record-setters — Akmal Danial in compound men, Catherine Looi in compound women, Muhammad Haiqal Danish in recurve men and Joey Tan Xing Lei in recurve women. Between them they accounted for eight of the eleven record entries.

Only Akmal Danial went on to win the individual final as well.

Sabah's Catherine Looi Mei Qi produced the most dramatic qualification round of the Games. Fourteenth after the first distance on 336, she shot 347 in the second — breaking a sixteen-year-old record set by Saritha Cham Nong at SUKMA Melaka 2010 — and climbed thirteen places to top the table on 683, a second record. In the final she was beaten by Perak's Puteri Qaira Qistina, the archer she had edged by one point that morning. Qualification gold, individual silver.

Pahang's Haiqal Danish did the same in recurve and finished a step lower again. His 339 broke the 36-arrow record; his 674 broke the 72-arrow record by eighteen points, the largest single improvement of the Games. He took qualification gold, lost his semifinal, and finished with individual bronze. Pahang's men's team, whose 1,969 had also broken a record, lost the final to Johor.

The Recurve Brackets Rewrote Everything

The recurve eliminations dismantled the seedings almost completely. Three of the top four men's seeds went out before the semifinals; four of the top five women followed them.

Terengganu's Afya Najiha binti Mohd Shaari won the women's gold from nineteenth in qualification — a position that earned her no qualification medal at all. She beat the sixth seed, then third seed Nur Auni Aqilah 7–3, then took the final from Joey Tan, who had broken her own 36-arrow record that morning with 329 and claimed top seed on a count of tens. Wilayah Persekutuan's Alia Qursyiah, who had removed second seed Nur Ieka Hariesya in a shoot-off, took bronze.

The men's event was scarcely more orderly. Sabah's Evan Rich Chong Qi Wei, seeded fifth, beat the fourth seed 7–1 in the quarterfinal and went on to take gold. His opponent in the final was Selangor's Muhammad Irfan Hilmi bin Mohd Kusyairi — the eighteenth seed, who had beaten the second seed 7–3 and the seventh 6–0 to get there. Haiqal Danish took bronze; Sarawak's Pok Hoe En, seeded nineteenth, finished fourth.

Wee Yee Qi and the Sarawak Haul

Sarawak's Wee Yee Qi assembled the second-best return of the Games without breaking anything. She qualified fifth in compound women, took individual bronze, anchored Sarawak to gold in the compound women's team alongside Aira Nadirah and Nur Zara Aisyah, and added a second gold in the compound mixed team with Eason Lau. Two golds and a bronze.

Sarawak finished with seven medals, level with Terengganu on total and second only on golds. Joey Tan's qualification gold and individual silver, the two compound team titles, a compound men's team silver and bronzes in the compound women's individual and recurve men's team made them the most broadly successful state of the week.

Johor's Double, Selangor's Consolation

Johor took both recurve team titles without setting a single record. Their men — Muhammad Akid Bazli, Muhammad Danish Amsyar and Wan Qayyim Syahmi — beat record-holders Pahang in the final. Their women, who had qualified fifth, went through Perak, Perlis and a shoot-off against Kelantan before beating Kedah 6–2.

Hosts Selangor had a stranger week. Their recurve women set a team record of 1,880 in qualification and then lost their quarterfinal to Kelantan 1–5. Their compensation came in the recurve mixed team, where Nur Ieka Hariesya and Muhammad Rizq Arif took the state's only gold. Add three bronzes and two silvers and Selangor finished with six medals — none of them from the event they had rewritten the record for.

What It Adds Up To

Forty-two medals were awarded across fourteen events. Eleven of the thirteen states took at least one; only Melaka and Perlis went home empty-handed. Kelantan's single bronze came from Nur Auni Wafiy in the compound women's qualification.

The margins tell the real story. Records were not shaved but broken open — eighteen points in recurve men, forty and forty-four in the team events. Seven compound men finished above a record that had stood two years; three recurve men did the same. And when a nineteenth seed can win gold and an eighteenth seed reach a final, the gap between the best archer on the range and the twentieth has narrowed to about one bad end.

That makes for a harder tournament to win. It also makes for a considerably healthier one.