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I’m not the Jill of all trades, says dragonboater, sailor and rower Joan Poh

SINGAPORE – Opportunity may come knocking once, and perhaps a second time, if one is lucky in life. But three times beggars belief, until one hears Joan Poh recount her story of her unusual journey from national dragonboat athlete to sailor, to rower and Olympic hopeful.

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SINGAPORE – Opportunity may come knocking once, and perhaps a second time, if one is lucky in life. But three times beggars belief, until one hears Joan Poh recount her story of her unusual journey from national dragonboat athlete to sailor, to rower and Olympic hopeful.

Hands callused, skin tanned from hours spent training under the hot sun at Pandan Reservoir, Poh may look the part of a seasoned national athlete now, but the 26-year-old confesses that she was a late-bloomer.

FIRST, SHE WAS A DRAGONBOAT ATHLETE

Nine years ago, Poh was an “unfit” nursing student at Nanyang Polytechnic when she decided to sign up for the school dragonboat team to challenge herself. Poh, who had previously played the tuba in her secondary school military band, discovered what she had signed on for during her first 2.4km fitness test with the team.

“It was tough, and I was crying all the time,” said Poh, laughing, as she recounted her first year with the school team.

“At the 14min mark of the 2.4km test, I had only done four rounds on the track and they terminated the test before I could even finish it. They said, ‘forget it’.”

Putting in extra hours on the track during the exam period, Poh eventually clocked 11min 30sec within the year, and powered her way to become one of the best paddlers on the team. In 2009, she earned a call-up to the national women’s team, and competed at the 2011 SEA Games in Palembang.

Her SEA Games debut was unforgettable, albeit for the wrong reasons, as she said: “I remember coming in last…the gap was so huge that even the locals were jeering us. We went there feeling so hopeful. It was embarrassing.”

In 2012, she decided to quit the national team – which was hit by a high turnover of team members – to pursue a nursing degree at the National University of Singapore.

THEN, ON TO SAILING

Poh thought she had left life as a national athlete, and its grueling training regime, behind as she began her new life as a university undergraduate.

But a second chance came a-calling, when Poh’s varsity dragonboat captain secretly signed her up for an athlete recruitment programme run by the Singapore Sailing Federation and Sport Singapore. Both organisations had launched the talent scouting programme in the universities to search for a suitable sailing crew for women’s 470 sailor Dawn Liu ahead of the 2013 Myanmar SEA Games.

After undergoing interviews, height, weight and arm span measurements – taller, heavier crews are preferred as they are able to extend further out of the boat to achieve faster speeds – at the Singapore Sports Institute, the 10 candidates were whittled down to two – Poh and a basketballer – after sessions out at sea with Liu.

Poh was not even the first choice, she recalled with a wry smile, as Liu chose the basketballer. That, however, did not work out and months before the 2013 Games, she found herself sailing the seas with her new sailing partner.

While fitness was not an issue for the paddler, learning the ropes in a completely new sport – under the helm of a complete stranger – proved a huge challenge.

“I remember being very confused in the boat…I thought I was going to be a deadweight,” admitted Poh.

“Sailing is very tactical, I worked very hard in the boat but I had no idea what was going on in the race. I didn’t find it very fulfilling.

“Dawn had sailed for decades and she was very experienced…we spent a lot of time on getting my feel of the boat, balance and keeling the boat at a certain degree.”

With too little time together, the 470 pair did not qualify for the Myanmar SEA Games, but decided to work towards qualifying for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in the women’s 49erFX class. The hunt for their Olympic ticket saw the duo competing in regattas around the world over the next 18 months, and Poh took a year off from her university studies to focus on their campaign.

But the partnership failed to take off, and the pair saw their hopes prematurely dashed when Liu broke her hand at the start of the International Sailing Federation World Championships in Spain in September 2014. Instead, it was teammates Griselda Khng and Sara Tan who earned the sole Olympic ticket to Brazil in their class.

Poh received more devastating news days later, when Liu decided to end the partnership with just eight months left to the 2015 SEA Games.

Poh added: “I was very upset because I wanted to do the 2015 SEA Games and I couldn’t find a partner in time. I even tried to join a keelboat team but they were formed already.

“The SEA Games was a big sporting event in Singapore, and finally my family and friends can see what sports is about, but my chance was gone.”

THIRD TIME LUCKY

Once again, Poh thought she was done with her sporting career. But again, the dragonboater turned sailor was proven wrong. In December 2014, a friend suggested that she try rowing. Up for a new challenge, Poh and her friend got a splashing start in rowing, as their boat capsized during their first outing at the Pandan Reservoir.

She said, with an embarrassed laugh: “We were swimming and struggling… (Olympic rower) Aisyah had to come and rescue us in the motorboat. This was a boat that was supposed to be more stable…That was really embarrassing!”

Despite the initial hiccups, the former sailor felt at home in her new sport, as she added: “I could manage the training load because of my background in dragonboat and sailing. There are similarities between dragonboat and rowing as they are cyclical sports where you do the same movements over and over and try to achieve perfection. Maybe that’s why sailing was not my thing, because it was tactical…I’m more of an endurance sport athlete.”

Undeterred and undaunted, Poh worked at her craft, earning her coveted ticket to the SEA Games, where she won bronze in the women’s pair 1,000m with Joanna Chan.

But the highs of competing in her first home Games in front of her family – particularly her mother – was followed by a debilitating low, as Chan quit the sport after the regional event. For the next four months, Poh trained alone at the reservoir without any coach, before she decided to take up an unexpected offer from sailor Elisa Yukie Yokoyama to campaign together for the 2016 Rio Olympics.

While the duo did not qualify, Poh knew she was not ready to give up on her Olympic dream.

TOKYO 2020?

Poh has now set her sights on qualifying for the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020 in the women’s singles sculls – the same event that teammate Aisyah first blazed a trail in by becoming the first Singaporean rower to qualify for the Olympics in 2016.

With a rowing coach, Irishman John Holland now on board, Poh is also gunning to compete at the Asian Games in Indonesia next year. She has notched some creditable performances in the singles sculls this year, finishing second at the Southeast Asian Rowing Championships in Danang, and placing seventh out of 12 competitors at the Asia Rowing Championship in Pattaya.

Balancing work shifts as a nurse at Tan Tock Seng Hospital with nine weekly training sessions, Poh is also trying to save up money for her Olympic campaign. With overseas competitions costing an average of S$1,000 for a trip to Hong Kong, the rower – who has applied for funding from the Spex Scholarship – admitted that the financial burden can be hefty.

But this national rower, and self-confessed risk taker, is determined to trudge on.

Unsure of her Olympic ambitions when she was sailing with Liu, Poh is certain about what she wants now. She said: “I always knew I wanted to go to the Olympics, but I didn’t know why. But I saw the other countries’ sailors, how passionate and dedicated they were to their dreams.

“It is a process that involves planning and plotting ahead of time, grinding when no one is watching. Working towards a sense of excellence, with the Olympics the pinnacle of sport, I realised this is what I want to do. This is not someone else’s campaign now, it’s mine.”

With her foray into three sports, Poh is also now part of a unique group of athletes who have competed, and excelled in more than one sport. Other examples include: Eileen Chai, who won a bronze in gymnastics at the 1991 SEA Games before venturing into diving and athletics, and former national swimmer May Ooi, who is now competing in mixed martial arts.

The tag, however, does not sit too comfortably with Poh, who confesses that even her mother – who works in marketing – gets confused by the sports that she has competed in.

She worries about being called a “jack of all trades”, but Poh offers a peek into why this late-bloomer is so set on achieving her Olympic dream.

“I grew up feeling quite inferior as a child, as my family is not well to do and I come from a broken home,” said Poh, who lives with her mother, stepfather and two younger sisters as her parents divorced when she was young.

“Sometimes I wonder, if I had the opportunities like others, where would I have been? Which is why whenever there is an opportunity, I’m daring enough to take it up, I’m willing to take the risk. There is a good chance that I won’t make it, and all this is in vain, but I would rather take that chance, explore, push my limits and see where that takes me.

“This is my one shot at trying to show people that I can be more, and to show myself that I can be more. Even though I didn’t have a great start (in life), I can finish strong.”

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