SEA Games 2025: Amanda Lim dedicates 50m gold to late dad in swansong Games
Sign up now: Get the biggest sports news in your inbox
Singapore swimmer Amanda Lim enjoys a fairy-tale ending to her SEA Games career after she reclaimed her women's 50m freestyle crown in her only race at her 10th Games.
ST PHOTO: BRIAN TEO
Follow topic:
- Amanda Lim won gold in the 50m freestyle at the SEA Games in 25.03sec, beating Filipino-Canadian Olympic medallist Kayla Sanchez to mark her seventh win in the event.
- Lim announced her SEA Games retirement after her victory, ending a successful Games career with 21 golds, five silvers and two bronzes.
- Despite retiring from the SEA Games, Lim plans to compete at the Asian Games, motivated by her late father and support from her family and employers.
AI generated
BANGKOK – All eyes were on the blockbuster showdown on Dec 14 between Singapore’s defending champion Quah Ting Wen and Filipino-Canadian Olympic medallist Kayla Sanchez to decide who would be crowned South-east Asia’s fastest female swimmer.
Amanda Lim, six-time winner of the women’s 50m freestyle, seemed to have been forgotten.
But the 32-year-old Singaporean made her only race of the Games count when she touched home first in 25.03 seconds ahead of Sanchez (25.15sec) and fellow Filipina Heather White (25.38), while Quah (25.42) was fourth.
And as swiftly as her race was won, Lim announced that this would be her last Games as she wrapped up her 10th outing with a perfect ending – her seventh win in her pet event.
She won the race six times in a row from 2009 to 2019, before placing second behind Thailand’s Jenjira Srisaard in 2022 and Quah in 2023.
In all, she has 21 golds, five silvers and two bronzes at the regional meet.
She told The Straits Times: “I spoke to a lot of friends and they said that you know when the feeling comes, and I think this is it, although I still really love the feeling of the adrenaline when I’m standing behind the blocks.
“That’s something that I would definitely miss a lot, especially at the SEA Games because it means a lot to the country. It’s the pressure and the need to deliver and when everything comes together, it’s nice.”
However, Lim is not about to hang up her goggles just yet, as her winning time qualified her for the 2026 Asian Games to set up a Aichi-Nagoya swansong in Japan before she calls it a day.
She said: “For now I just need to take a break, rest and recover. I have to go back to work and I’ll listen to my body. I know what I want to do until the Asian Games.”
Despite working on her post-swimming career – she has been a senior consultant in Ernst & Young with its people consulting team for the last three years – she remains committed to her craft.
In Singapore, she trains with Bobby Hurley at the Tanglin Trust School and also travels to Brisbane to work with Tim Lane, coach of Australia’s Olympic champion sprinter Cameron McEvoy.
The biggest change in her programme, which she pays for out of her own pocket, is engaging Portugal-based Matt Smith to come up with a tailor-made strength and mobility programme which has shown results in Thailand.
But her biggest motivation comes from her love for her father Lim Heng Cheh, who died in September from liver cancer.
Holding back tears, she said: “It has been a really tough two years for us. He was diagnosed two years ago and I had to go away to train in Australia and there were a lot of hard decisions I had to make. It was just bad news after bad news and I don’t even know how I got through everything.”
Thanking her family and boss for their support, she added: “This win is definitely the top moment of my SEA Games career. I hope my dad’s watching in heaven. I know he really wants to be here and I hope he’s happy up there watching this.”
