Life-changing experience for Pandelela

KUALA LUMPUR: London Olympic diving bronze medallist Pandelela Rinong is still a teenager but her family’s welfare is very much on her mind. The 19-year-old has said that she will use the money earned from the incentives she has received so far to provide for a more comfortable life for her family. Pandelela has been rewarded with hundreds of thousands of dollars from various quarters over the past three weeks, with the latest being a RM90,000 insurance policy under the Carlsberg Retirement Scheme from the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) yesterday. Pandelela was rewarded with RM100,000 by The Star and RM300,000 by the government immediately after becoming the first Malaysian woman medal winner at the Olympics.

She has also expressed her desire to pursue Sports Science at Universiti Malaya and, as such, she can opt to turn the four-year scholarship offer to study in Australia from the Sarawak government into share units if she wants to. The Bidayuh girl described winning the Olympic bronze medal as “a life-changing experience” – allowing her to provide a better life for her parents and siblings with the monetary rewards earned. ”My dream home is a bungalow. Who doesn’t want to own one?” she said. “Realistically, I want to have my own house ... I am thinking of buying a terrace house in Kuala Lumpur and another one in Sarawak. “Nothing is certain yet but my intention is to give my family a better life. The house we are staying at in Kuching does not belong completely to us as we are still paying for it,” added Pandelela, who is the second eldest of four siblings. The diver has also reaped nearly RM200,000 in incentives over the last three years, having done well in the New Delhi Commonwealth Games, Guangzhou Asian Games and the Diving World Series. Pandelela bought her father Pamg Joheng, a contract labourer who earns RM45 a day, a new Proton Exora to replace the Mitsubishi Trident that has been the family’s only vehicle for the last 14 years. National badminton champion Lee Chong Wei also secured an insurance policy worth RM260,000 following his two silver medal successes in two Olympic Games – London 2012 and Beijing 2008. The insurance scheme so far has 88 recipients with a total value of RM3.13mil. It is only for Olympic medallists and Asian Games and Commonwealth Games gold medallists. The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) will finance the premium for each recipient for a period of 14 years. Pandelela later joined her diving team-mates – Wendy Ng Yan Yee and Cheong Jun Hoong – to perform the current K-Pop dance craze “Oppa Gangnam Style”.