Paddling through loss: National canoeist’s passion endures despite dad’s death during O-level exams

SINGAPORE – On the morning of his first O-level exam paper in October 2017, Jovi Jayden Kalaichelvan, then 16, was unaware that his father had died a few hours earlier.

His mother received the dreaded call from the hospital at 5am, but chose not to tell him until after his English paper was over.

In fact, Jovi had found out about his father’s hospitalisation only a few days earlier, when he returned from a canoeing competition in the Czech Republic.

His father, then 55, was warded in the intensive care unit for a liver condition. Jovi was hopeful that he would be able to pull through.

“So when my mother picked me up after the exam and said he had passed away, my mind went blank, and I was silent the whole car ride to the hospital. The news was difficult to digest,” recalled Jovi, now 24.

His father, who ran his own property business, had always been the gentler presence at home, cheering him on from the sidelines and filming his races.

After his death, Jovi found himself not only grieving, but also stepping into an adult role far earlier than expected.

His 57-year-old mother, Ms Navin Sandhu, who used to be a flight stewardess, had become a stay-home mum after the birth of his youngest sibling and only sister, now an 18-year-old polytechnic student.

Jovi also has two younger brothers. One of them, who is 23, has cerebral palsy and global developmental delay, and lives in a care facility. The other brother, who is 20, is serving his national service and, like Jovi, was sitting a major exam – the PSLE – when their father died.

Dealing with the loss of her husband, Ms Sandhu said other tragic events brought the family to its knees.

“We were still grieving when, just one month and a half later, my niece passed away. She was a daughter to me, an older sister to my kids,” said Ms Sandhu, adding that the family also became entangled in a court dispute over a family property, which they lost.

Ms Sandhu had to dip into her savings to cope, but the family remained shrouded in financial difficulties for at least four years. Jovi took on part-time coaching roles to help support his siblings.

“Between the losses we experienced and the court cases we were thrown into, seeing him carry that double heartbreak and weight on his shoulders, and still find the strength to keep moving forward, is what makes me the most proud,” said Ms Sandhu.

However, school became a struggle. At National Junior College, Jovi found it hard to focus and was eventually retained in his first year.

Staying afloat through canoeing

Looking back at that tumultuous period, Jovi said what pulled him through was his passion for canoeing and the family he had built in that sport.

“Aside from enjoying the sport and wanting to compete, I was also really close to my teammates. They were some of my closest friends, so training together helped a lot as well,” he said.

When he went to St Joseph’s Institution in 2014, Jovi decided to take up canoeing as a co-curricular activity as swimming was not an option.

Learning to balance a racing boat took months, but he was drawn to the discipline and focus the sport demanded.

“When I’m training on water, I don’t think about anything else. I just focus on hitting whatever target the coach sets… and that helped quite a lot to clear my head whenever I needed to,” said Jovi.

At the end of his Secondary 2 year, he was selected to be a member of the national junior development team. By the start of Secondary 3, he was training two mornings a week, before ramping it up to every weekday morning in Secondary 4.

This meant meeting the team at MacRitchie Reservoir at 6am and training until 7.30am, before rushing to school for his first lesson at 8am.

When he moved to National Junior College in 2018, he trained twice a day at the Kallang Basin – before and after school.

Mr Bill Lee, 40, who has coached Jovi since he was 14, said canoeists require daily training sessions to build both strength and endurance for the sport.

“It’s necessary for us to stay in touch with the water because the water feeling is quite important for us to be able to move the boat,” he said.

Mature well beyond his age

Mr Lee, currently the national head coach for canoeing, said the period after the death of Jovi’s father was especially difficult, but he noted that Jovi handled it with remarkable maturity.

“As the oldest sibling, he really had to step up. Not just to take care of his mum, but his siblings as well,” he said, adding that Jovi’s mother was struggling emotionally at the time.

Since Jovi was more mature than what was typical for his age, Ms Sandhu found herself relying on him a lot.

“I remember when we would drive down to Batu Pahat to visit my older sister, he would take care of his younger siblings in the back of the car, feeding them, playing with them, and calming them down if they cried,” she said.

Jovi was also the one she would turn to for help when her younger children faced difficulties in school.

“He has always been the one to keep me grounded... He is the standard-bearer for this family, and my only hope is that he always stays as strong and steadfast as he is today,” she said.

During that difficult period, Mr Lee said Jovi found support within the canoeing community. His teammates, a close-knit group, rallied around him, sometimes helping out at home when things became overwhelming.

Said Mr Lee: “Just as Jovi was a support pillar for his family, the canoeing family became a support pillar for him.”

Despite facing challenges, Jovi remained deeply committed to the sport and was a natural mentor to younger paddlers.

Well liked by his juniors, he actively guided and supported them, Mr Lee said, adding that this sense of identity and belonging helped anchor him during that turbulent period.

“Even though he repeated a year in JC, I don’t see it as a setback actually. I think it was a good time that he had for himself, to really consider what he wanted,” he said.

Giving back to the sport

When the pandemic disrupted training at Kallang, Jovi persisted with home workouts and virtual training sessions.

When he entered national service in 2021 after the A-level exam, he continued training rigorously under special arrangements.

In 2022, Jovi represented Singapore at the SEA Games in Vietnam, winning a bronze medal in canoeing. He did not participate in the recent SEA Games because long-distance paddling events were not offered.

Today, he is a third-year undergraduate at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, studying engineering systems and design, while still training intensely and coaching part-time.

Supported under Sport Singapore’s SPEX Potential scheme, which provides financial and programmatic support for athletes doing high-performance sports, he is now aiming for the 2030 Asian Games and 2032 Olympics.

When asked why he does not retire from the sport to pursue his other interests, such as a career as a pilot or in financial technology, Jovi said he wants to give back as much as he has gained from canoeing.

“I’ll train full time for a few more years because before I retire, I want to maximise what I can do in the sport first,” said Jovi.