Racing in the fast lane: A tale of youth, spunk and pertinacity

INSPIRED BY International Women’s Day held earlier this month we feature two of the amazing women who are within our midst.

While both these young stars work hard to accomplish their chosen careers, there are many pitfalls that others do not see. These experiences fire their yearning and sense of success. They also give them ample challenges fraught with hardship and obstacles which they stay determined to surmount.

Aimi Iwasaki: Gritty, versatile triathlete and a chef of wonders

She comes across immediately as someone who has seen both the best and the worst of people, and hence she is guarded with her words and gestures. Once she gets more familiar with you, she begins to open up and joke about herself and what she has experienced.

Today, Aimi Iwasaki is among of the nation’s top triathletes.

Born in Penang to a mixed-race couple, her dad being Japanese and her mum Malay, she developed an uncanny trait of studying herself. This can be both good and bad, she admits, as she is quite critical of herself.

An alumna of Chung Ling High School, she grew up to be multilingual and speaks four languages – English, Malay, Mandarin and Japanese. This helps immensely today as she teaches online at her father’s language school based in Penang.

Aimi’s schooling was decided by her mum who wanted balance in her education especially since her mother was active in sports herself. Karate was the only sport that Aimi practiced at school. But after she once followed her elder sister to a swim meet, sparking a journey of immense joy.

Begging her mum to enrol her in swimming classes at the Penang Sports Club, she began to compete a year later and became successful. She continued to specialise in the butterfly stroke and started winning about six medals per meet in both the butterfly and freestyle categories.

When she was 14, Aimi moved to Melaka, took the enrolment exams and passed, joining the Pay Fong boarding school. What drove her then was being offered to go there to do am open sea competition – which was to swim across the Straits of Melaka, from Melaka to Sumatra.

It was a project meant for the Malaysia Book of Records. But even though she and the team trained very hard for a few years, the project never took off.

Left with no discernible short-term goal, she took up cycling at 17 whilst at Pay Fong. She was lucky, she says, as her coach Fairoz Izni was extremely supportive and built her confidence. He taught her not to depend on equipment, as she could not afford a good bike, but on her own strength and willpower. Such teachings still resonate with her till today.

In only her second-year of cycling, she competed in the nationals, winning a spot to the Asian Cycling Championships (ACC) in India in 2009, and later again in Japan 2016 as an individual time trialist.  It was at these times, when Aimi had found her calling so to speak, that she felt most hard done by.

Somehow, she felt that her work ethic wasn’t being encouraged at times especially by other national competitors. She felt especially discouraged when in 2019 she raised funds to participate and flew personally to India for the ACC only to be told that she was not registered for any of the events.

Cycling was something she has poured herself into. From 2014 till 2016, she was part of the Terengganu cycling team, Malaysia’s first pro squad. With support and training, she won a gold medal in team time trial at the Sukma Games.

While she was part of the Terengganu team, she competed in her first triathlon for fun and emerged fifth in her maiden event. Until 2018, she did it regularly simply to gain experience and push herself.

In 2016, when her contract with Terengganu ended, she went back to Penang and fell into depression. She totally cut herself off and just spent days and nights under her mother’s care. Aimi says that these two years were probably due to the bullying and stress of competition that she had gone through.

In late 2018, she recovered enough to start competing again, this time as a triathlete and registered for national championships in 2019 to try and make the SEA Games that year. She spent every waking moment training for five months and won the spot on the team. In the SEA Games triathlon, Aimi finished at fourth place in the team race and fifth in the individual category.

She felt very invigorated and started looking at ways to try and get local and foreign help to move overseas to train more seriously. This was when she focused more on social media to gain a presence and as a way to earn money.

Cooking has always been a great love of Aimi’s and she uses it to de-stress herself. Since she went to culinary school at the Academy of Culinary Arts for four years, she created Aimi’s Kitchen as a way to sharing her love of good and healthy food with others. This, as well as personal training, helped her earn money during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Having these other forms of income helped her immensely for competitions, as triathletes must seek outside funding to participate to pay for event registration, flight tickets and accommodation.

Currently she juggles her own training, teaching PT, helping at her fathers’ language school, and adds some projects from social media to help her continue competing.

Aimi is constantly on the lookout for long term sponsorships to help fund her training. especially since she’s planning on participating at the World Championships (WC) in Nice this September. She’s currently being helped by Boom+, a local soft drink, and says she needs more competition to prepare her for Nice, as she needs momentum to compete at the world level.

As part of those preparations for the WC she has earmarked the Professional Triathlon Organisation (PTO) event in Singapore this May and the Ironman in Desaru in June.

In the midst of all this, she’s wary of her mental health after being through a tough period before. This, above all, is important, she says, and she hopes that more people prioritise their own mental health as well.

Ahirine Ahiruddin: On third gear as driver, fighter and actor

Ahirine Ahiruddin or E, as she is popularly known, was not exposed to sports in school and only went so far as studying Silat Gayung whilst schooling at SMK Section 4 Puchong Bandar Kinrara.

So, when she says her goal is to be like the Malaysian version of Gina Carrano of the Mandalorian and Haywire fame, there is a tremendous story to this.

It all started for E, when after school she went to National Service for two months before getting an offer to study mass communications in UITM Melaka. This whet her appetite for something more physical for her life. When she got to studying journalism at UITM, she joined the the Reserve Training Officer Unit (ROTU). While there she landed a gig writing for NST’s Cars, Bikes & Trucks section which gave her opportunity travel every weekend whilst in university, riding bikes to review.

She eventually quit ROTU when she was offered the Navy ROTU and joined that instead. Upon completion, she now has the rank of “Leftenan Muda”.

Once she completed her degree in journalism, she joined Astro as broadcast journalist on the entertainment beat and was one of the producers of the “Mana Bro” game show.

This eventually opened the world of acting for her. Because of her biking prowess, she always wanted to become an action movie star. She eventually landed a role in her first movie “Rempit 2”. To date she had had acting classes with Datuk Fauziah Nawi to help her prepare better.

Later, she was promised a four-movie deal with Zebra Studios, a local movie company, and she completed her first one with them with a starring role in “Gadis Jelubu” with Datuk Hattan.

She’s waiting for the rest to materialise. To date, her favourite roles have been in “Tebus” and “What the Heist?”, a Mandarin action flick.

Right now, E does Muay Thai, whilst racing in the SuperMoto (MSF) series and Toyota Gazoo Racing (TGR). She says these opportunities materialised because she has been part of Most Fun Gym in Sungai Penchala under the legendary Foreman Oh, who is well known in the motor racing industry.

She has raced in the MSF series for the past two years.

In the TGR, she has completed three seasons and been on the podium six times out of nine races which is no mean feat for a rookie driver.

Although she does a myriad of dangerous sports, Muay Thai is her favourite. She has thus far fought three fights under Merican Muay Thai in the 60kg category. Her next fight is in May, and she will be training for that during Ramadan.

She is attracting a lot of attention and sponsors like Breitling and Red Bull to help her succeed. She aims to start a YouTube channel to focus solely on Muay Thai and is working hard to put this together.

Just like Aimi above, E also has gotten some unwanted fans or stalkers now and has made her wary of meeting new people. She appreciates them supporting her career, but things have become creepy when they follow her and send unwanted gifts and offers to her training centre. – The Vibes, March 17, 2024