Quah Jing Wen eyes historic Olympic spot with fellow relay swimmers

SINGAPORE – This Chinese New Year, Quah Jing Wen will not be enjoying the festivities, “dressing up, going visiting, and getting ang pow (red packet) money”. Instead, she is hoping to cash in on a historic Olympic spot with her 4x100m medley relay teammates at the Feb 11-18 swimming world championships in Doha.

The 23-year-old, who was in Oman for a three-week training camp with the national team in December, said: “This is the first time I’m missing Chinese New Year. Usually, it would be Christmas or birthdays, so I’m used to such sacrifices for the sport.

“Knowing we might be qualifying for the Olympics is exciting. Obviously, I would like to have a certain result, but that would be a by-product of my training; the result will show if I’m doing something right.”

The emergence of Letitia and Levenia Sim in the past two years has given the team, who include Jing Wen and her older sister Ting Wen, a golden chance to be the first Singaporeans to qualify for a women’s relay event at the Summer Games.

There are a maximum of 16 spots for Paris 2024. Three teams – the United States, Australia and Canada – have qualified for the 4x100m women’s medley relay after finishing in the top three at the last world championships in Fukuoka.

The remaining 13 slots will be decided by the heats results at the world meet. With the Americans, Australians and Canadians likely to be competing, the Republic should secure an Olympic spot with a top-16 finish in Qatar.

The Quahs and Sims had clocked 4min 00.87sec at the Hangzhou Asian Games and, while they were

disqualified after anchor Ting Wen jumped 0.1sec early,

that time – plus the difference from Ting Wen’s premature start – would rank them 13th at the 2023 world championships.

Jing Wen said: “What happened at the Asian Games is a motivating factor. Singapore may be a small country, but we can be competitive at the Asian level and, hopefully, now we can show we can compete on the world stage and be a force to be reckoned with. It will be nice to make a national record (currently 4:06.97) and get the time official.

“Letitia has been proving herself countless times and is the only local female swimmer to make the A cut (in the women’s 100m breaststroke) so far. We have a lot of freestylers, our butterfly is not too bad, and we had Roanne (Ho) and Samantha (Yeo) for breaststroke. But before Levenia came on board, our backstroke field was not very deep and would always change.

“A team works better if we are all training together and comfortable with each other, so the Sims have been really good additions.”

She took part in a swimathon on Jan 6 to raise over $20,000 for Methodist Girls’ School’s inaugural Swim for Life initiative. The funds will go to Singapore Aquatics’ Empowering Lives Through Aquatics programme, a free learn-to-swim scheme to equip youth from vulnerable backgrounds with water survival skills under the SwimSafer national water safety syllabus.

Players from the national women’s water polo team – who will make their debut at the Feb 2-18 World Aquatics Championships – were also present to introduce youth from the South-east District to Flippa ball, a simplified version of water polo.

MGS vice-principal Diana Goh said: “We believe MGS needs to be others-centred and not just always be concerned about ourselves. Athletes can sometimes be very individualistic, so coming together to do something for a common cause is just so meaningful for us.

“This is a good opportunity to do something to help and empower others. I like the word empower because it’s beyond enabling. Hopefully, the beneficiaries who are learning how to swim can take this confidence beyond swimming.”

Singapore Aquatics president Mark Chay noted: “We are heartened to see community-led initiatives by the aquatics fraternity, such as MGS, to support our efforts to make aquatics more accessible to all.”