2025 Athlete of the Year nominee: Letitia Sim

Q: If 2025 were a chapter in a book, what would its title be and why?

A: I would name it For The Plot because for me, 2025 was a year of adventure and doing things for the fun of it, rather than thinking of things more logically.

Q: When you’re at your best, like when you won gold medals in SEA Games record times in all your five events at the 2025 edition, in the process becoming the first athlete to complete the breaststroke triple, what’s different about you?

A: When I am at my best, I don’t overthink as much and have less expectations.

The most recent example I can think of

was the last SEA Games

because I truly had no expectations going into the meet about my performance. I was training in the United States, where we swim short-course yards and I take five to six strokes per length, which is significantly shorter than long-course metres, where I take about 20 strokes.

In mid-November, I had a collegiate meet so the turnaround between that and the SEA Games was quite short. I felt my preparation leading up to the SEA Games was a bit rocky, and I didn’t have much to think or expect because my races could go either way. But I’m glad it all worked out, even if I wished I had more long-course training to build up my confidence.

Q: Did the pressure shift once you realised you weren’t just chasing something but setting a new standard?

A: Not really, because I already put a lot of pressure on myself, so external pressure from other sources doesn’t feel as great as the pressure I put on myself.

Q: Was there a moment last year when you realised you were at a level you’d never seen before?

A: I would have to say no. I never believed I have reached my full potential because every time I finish a race, some part of me knows there was something I could have done to be better. I think this keeps me humble even at my level, but it also pushes me to strive for more in life.

Seeing myself achieve my goals is more of a mixture of happiness and relief because part of me is happy that I achieved my goal, while the other part feels as if the anxiety of working towards accomplishing that goal has finally been relieved.

Q: Was there anything you had to let go of – a habit, a belief, a way of thinking – to get to the level you did in 2025?

A: Ironically, I had to stop caring so much. I found myself constantly anxious about very niche things in and out of the water, which led to me stressing out over uncontrollable factors in my life.

I was always anxious about how I felt in the water and its association with my times. For example, if I did a fast time in practice but it felt “too hard”, I would question if I was being efficient, if my stroke technique is fatiguing too much, or maybe I was not in shape enough. My mind would go down a rabbit hole from there.

When I started to separate how I felt and acknowledged that I was swimming well, my mindset was able to shift. Also, I started caring less about how different I felt leading up to a competition because of the difference in time zones, weather et cetera.

Once I adopted this Yolo (you only live once) mentality, and stopped overthinking and caring too much about my times and performances, I started to understand and enjoy the process of my sport more than I have before.

Q: What’s a personal first from last season that mattered more than any public milestone?

A: Ever since I was little, I have always been extremely emotionally attached to my race performances. For last season, not crying after a bad race and being able to move on from it in an emotionally mature way was a huge personal milestone for me.

One meet the old me would have cried about was the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore. I really wanted to race well there in front of the home crowd, and it was disappointing because I know I could have been faster than the times I posted at that meet.

I also didn’t make the semi-finals at all, which sucked, but I just moved on from it after each race and got myself a sweet treat because I now feel that life is never that serious.