SEA Games 2025: A gold moment to savour for veteran kayakers Stephenie Chen and Lucas Teo
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Stephenie Chen and Lucas Teo rowing to victory for Singapore during the mixed canoe sprint kayak double 500m final at the SEA Games in Rayong, where the pair clinched gold on Dec 10.
PHOTO: SPORTSG
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- Stephenie Chen and Lucas Teo won gold in the mixed canoe sprint kayak double 500m at the 2025 SEA Games, their first major Games win together.
- Chen, with six gold medals, teamed up with Teo after women's kayak events were excluded.
- Singapore's taekwondo team also secured gold. More canoeing events are scheduled, offering further medal opportunities for Singapore.
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BANGKOK – Moments after crossing the finishing line of a gruelling race in Rayong on Dec 10, national kayaker Stephenie Chen reached back for a hand tap with her exhausted teammate Lucas Teo, who instantly obliged.
Modest as the celebration at the Royal Thai Navy Rowing and Canoeing Training Center was, for the veteran kayakers, it was a special moment to savour.
Close friends and teammates for almost 15 years when they first joined the national team, the duo had never competed together at a major competition until the mixed canoe sprint kayak double 500m final at the SEA Games.
It was the sixth gold at the biennial event for 33-year-old Chen, while Teo, 35, earned his fourth Games gold.
Interestingly, Chen’s first triumph at the Games was in 2011, and her most recent in 2015, was with Teo’s wife Suzanne Seah.
Lucas Teo and Stephenie Chen of Singapore posing with their SEA Games gold medals after their victory in the mixed canoe sprint kayak double 500m final at the Royal Thai Navy Rowing and Canoeing Training Center in Rayong on Dec 10.
PHOTO: SportSG/Dumrongsak Angsuworapruek
Chen said: “We entered the team around the same period of time together with Lucas’ wife. It definitely has been interesting. We have seen each other grow up, and we also spend a lot of time together. It was pretty fun.
“It helps that we understand each other and Lucas always tries his best, and I think that’s a good trait to have. It’s always heartening to know that there’s something that you can depend on when you do this.”
As the sports programme does not feature any women’s kayak events, Chen, who last competed at the 2015 Games where she bagged two golds and a silver, decided to contest the mixed kayak doubles 200m and kayak four 500m mixed team.
The pair started training for the event in April.
Chen won an Asian Games silver in 2023 and was the first Singaporean kayaker to make an Olympic C final at Paris 2024.
At the SEA Games in Hanoi in 2022, Teo won the K1 1,000m event before pairing up with Brandon Ooi to win the men’s K2 1,000m final. In 2015, Teo struck gold in the K1 1,000m.
On Dec 10, their experience showed as Chen and Teo crossed the line first in 1min 49.086sec ahead of Vietnam (1:49.902) and Indonesia (1:50.985), who claimed the silver and bronze respectively.
Teo’s latest victory was also made more meaningful by the presence of his family, with his wife, six-year-old son Issac and four-year-old daughter Eden making the trip to Rayong to cheer him on.
Teo said: “I felt very well-supported by my family members. You can’t really hear them much when we are pushing really hard, and you stay really focused during the race.
“But after we crossed the finish line, we turned to the spectator stands and I saw them cheering me on.”
On Dec 10, Chen also added a silver in the kayak four 500m mixed team, after combining with Ooi, Alden Ler and Georgia Ng to finish second (1:38.161) behind Indonesia (1:37.916). Thailand won the bronze in 1:39.209.
Earlier in the day, national taekwondo exponents Diyanah Aqidah Muhammad Dian Khudhairi and Nicholas Khaw won Singapore’s first gold medals
With canoeing excluded from the 2023 edition in Cambodia, Team Singapore will be on the hunt for more golds on Dec 11, when they are in action in the men’s canoe slalom canoe single, men’s canoe sprint kayak double 200m and the mixed canoe sprint kayak double 200m.
At the Hanoi Games, Singapore won two gold medals and a bronze in canoeing.
