Leap into the unknown pays off for national sprinter Enn

SINGAPORE — At the start of last year, just a few months after she helped the national women’s 4x100m relay team set a new national record at the 2015 South-east Asian (SEA) Games in Singapore, national sprinter Wendy Enn found her athletics career in limbo.

She had just left her previous coach Fabian William, and as a result, had not been training regularly after the SEA Games.

Then one day in March 2016, she was at the training session of her boyfriend, national long jumper Khan Meng Meng, when Khan persuaded her to try her hand at the jump events.

That was where Enn found that she had the raw talent and power to do the triple jump. She decided to start training for the discipline after that.

Recalling how she got into the sport, the 23-year-old told TODAY: “I was kind of floating around and just training with my boyfriend most of the time.

“One day, he told me to try something different and give the jump events a go.

“I was sceptical at first because I had never tried jumps before. But I eventually gave it a shot, and we saw that my distances (in the triple jump) weren’t too bad. So that’s why I decided to start training in the event.”

Enn’s decision to go into triple jump has since paid off handsomely.

Last Friday at the 73rd Singapore Open Championships at the National Stadium, she leapt 12.05 metres to not only clinch the silver medal, but also set a new national record.

Her 12.05m effort did not just crack the previous national record of 11.89m set by Lynette Lim in 2014, it also made Enn became the first Singaporean female athlete to cross the 12m mark in the triple jump.

“I headed into the competition with the aim of breaking the 12m mark, so of course I’m very happy to have achieved it and broken the national record,” said Enn, who coaches athletics at a few schools. “But I only broke the record by just a bit, so I think I can still do even better.”

Nonetheless, her achievement is remarkable considering that the former Singapore Sports School (SSP) student has barely had a year of training in the event prior to her jump.

However, Enn, who now trains under former Singapore Athletics (SA) head coach Luis Cunha, believes that her background as a sprinter helped her to adapt more easily to the demands of the triple jump.

“When I first started (in the triple jump), there were some people who thought it’d be hard for me to focus on two different events,” she revealed.

“Also, because I’m not very tall (Enn is 1.60m), there were doubts over whether I was cut out for the triple jump. However, while most people think that sprints and jumps are very different, I think they are very similar because both require speed and plyometric training (jump training exercises to improve performance).

“So while there is still much work for me to do in terms of improving my technique, I was able to compensate for that with my speed, and that helped me break the national record.”

Despite becoming the top triple jumper in Singapore, Enn is still some way off from qualifying for the event at the SEA Games — the athlete who won the bronze medal in the triple jump at the 2015 SEA Games leapt a distance of 13.65m.

It is why Enn will be taking a break from the triple jump for now to focus only on sprints — she wants to earn a spot in this year’s SEA Games relay team. “I’ll stop my training for the triple jump for this season as my main aim now is to prove myself for the SEA Games,” said Enn.

“I hope to get into the national relay team again, so my focus will be solely on improving my sprints.

“But after the SEA Games, I’ll restart my training in triple jump and work on improving my technique, because I will be aiming to qualify for the event at the 2019 Games.”