KUALA LUMPUR – Small but mighty, Zara Aleesya Muhamad Suadi is the youngest Malaysian participant at the 2023 SEA Games in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The 11-year-old swimmer said she felt excited to debut at the biennial multisport event in the finswimming category and compete alongside adult athletes from 11 Southeast Asian countries.
Zara, who started learning swimming at six years old, will be representing the country in the 4x100m relay surface and 4x50m mixed relay surface.
“I am excited to go on my first SEA Games and I am still young and small. I feel that I have a big future ahead of me in fin swimming.
“But I feel challenged because I am small, and the other athletes are bigger than me. But I am also curious to see who could win when I compete with them.
“My team aims to achieve the set target so that we can prove our potential,” she said when met at the 2023 SEA Games flag-handing ceremony attended by Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh at the National Sports Council in Bukit Jalil here, yesterday.
The Melaka-born swimmer added she ventured into finswimming early this year because she wanted to try something new.
She found out about the sport from her coach who entered her into the 2023 Malaysian Finswimming Championships in Seremban, where she bagged five gold medals and one silver.
“It was the first event I participated in and not many people entered, so there was a lot of chance to get a medal.
“Our coach pushed us to enter the event and thankfully our club won many medals.
“Before I entered the championship, my family and I started researching finswimming. That was when I found out about monofin, which was weird for me at first but now I have become used to it,” Zara added.
Despite her age, the fifth-year student at SK (P) Methodist 2 Melaka has already envisioned what she wants to achieve when she grows up.
In sports, Zara, who is an only child, said she dreamed to be “the best athlete so I could beat the rest, while in life, my ambition is to become an engineer.”
Zara and her team will depart for Cambodia for the Games on May 10. – The Vibes, May 1, 2023
