Cycling to take a backseat, as SEA Games champion Dinah Chan retires

SINGAPORE — Tucking into vegan ice-cream at her neighbourhood cafe, former national cyclist Dinah Chan sports the lean, tanned body of an athlete who has spent close to a decade speeding through the streets on her bicycle.

She has shed three kilogrammes from her 1.71-metre, 60-kg frame since hanging up her cleats and cycling jersey last month, but the lightness the 31-year-old carries now goes beyond the physical.

Once reticent in the spotlight, Singapore cycling’s poster girl is relishing her newfound “freedom”, and time away from the sport that brought her fame and — in her own words — “a lot of pressure”.

She told TODAY: “I won’t miss being a national athlete, not at all. I feel like I’ve been released from a cage and I can fly now.

“I can feel like a normal person, no responsibility to train hard and win medals, eat well, sleep well.”

Hers was a career marked by a number of firsts. She won Singapore’s first SEA Games cycling gold in 16 years at the 2013 SEA Games. Two years later she became the first national cyclist to be awarded the SpexScholarship, a Government grant which provides athletes with stipends and other support to help them achieve success at the Asian, world and Olympic level.

But her journey was also riddled with many challenges, including a comeback from injuries sustained in a car accident three months before the 2013 SEA Games. This was followed by a 2.5-year long battle with chronic fatigue syndrome that left her exhausted and ready to throw in the towel.

Ms Chan said that she made the decision to retire after last month’s Asian Cycling Championships. “I didn’t want to take the scholarship and not have any medals. I tried my very best, and I know I tried, so that’s good enough for me.”

GRITS, GUTS & GLORY

A former gymnast, swimmer and distance runner, Ms Chan discovered triathlon in university and spent a brief one-year stint with the national triathlon team from 2008 to 2009.

She had the organisers of the 2009 SEA Games to thank for her foray into cycling, as she made the switch after triathlon was not included in that edition’s competition calendar.

At her first SEA Games in Vientiane, Laos, an experience Chan describes as one of the happiest in her career, she claimed a bronze in the time trial event before adding two more bronze medals two years later in Indonesia.

With each achievement came expectations, and Chan found herself thrust into the spotlight, touted as the one to finally end Singapore cycling’s gold medal drought at the SEA Games.

Not one for attention, nor the limelight, she had to adapt to the pressure of being the sport’s poster child.

She said: “I was one person, and I felt like I had to carry that responsibility. And being a SpexScholar (later), there was more pressure.”

Misfortune struck ahead of the 2013 Myanmar Games, when she was involved in a car accident during a training session that left her with a concussion, swollen and bleeding lips, a bloody nose, fractured and chipped teeth.

Back on her bicycle four days after the accident, Chan went on to make a triumphant return from injury to compete in the Games in Naypyidaw, where she finally earned her gold in the 30km time trial.

“After 2009, everyone said I should aim for gold and everybody believed in me. But I didn’t believe in myself. Finally, I did it for all those who helped me and believed in me all those years. I felt so relieved.”

Chan went on to finish fourth in the time trial at the Incheon Asian Games a year later in what was a career high for the national cyclist.

But her progress came to a screeching halt soon after when she was hit by extreme fatigue which left her legs burning, and her body so exhausted that she had to go to bed at 8pm every night. However, she continued to train and compete through what was eventually diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome.

At her first SEA Games on home ground in 2015, she was also hit by food poisoning and did not manage to defend her title, winning a bronze in the time trial event.

The disappointment was crushing, as Chan attributed it to the “combination of the pressure of (the Games being held) in Singapore, and the panic of not having solved this (fatigue) problem”.

Though ready to hang up her jersey after that, she decided to push on after she was awarded the SpexScholarship by the Singapore Sports Institute in 2015. With a stipend and support from the grant, the former teacher was able to train full-time.

She made the switch from road racing to the track, found herself a coach in Australia’s 2004 Olympic gold medallist Sara Carrigan, and the duo set out to find a solution to her condition. After consulting with many doctors over the course of a year and failing to find a medical solution, she only slowly regained her fitness and health after resorting to alternative treatments such as applied kinesiology. Known as muscle strength testing, it is an alternative method of diagnosis and treatment based on the belief that various muscles are linked to certain organs and glands.

Her long struggle with illness meant that she had to “start from scratch” in 2016. At the 2017 SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur, she did not make the podium in any of her track events. Chan said she would have kept going if she had qualified for the Asian Games in Indonesia in August but, when that did not pan out, she decided it was time to call it a day.

Despite ending what was initially a promising career with just one SEA Games gold, she does not have any regrets. This despite not fulfilling her early dream of competing at the Olympic Games.

She added: “Personally, I’m happy with my journey. My friends say my only result was in 2013, but it doesn’t matter to me.

“I would trade a (gold) medal for this experience…this prepared me for life, and made me stronger, taught me how to handle my emotions, manage my and others’ expectations of me, how to not care and to let go.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

Drawing from her religious faith, the Christian says she has found peace, and renewed drive, from guiding and coaching the younger cyclists.

She intends to pass on lessons from her journey as the sport’s first SpexScholar to her younger colleagues, which includes 2017 SEA Games gold medallist Calvin Sim and Luo Yiwei, who were awarded SpexScholarships for 2018.

Luo, 28, said Chan was an inspiration even before she began road cycling competitively. “It is heartening to see a Singaporean performing well time and time again, and it shows that we can definitely come ahead of our South-east Asian competitors if we have the right resources and set our minds to it,” said Luo, a silver medallist (women’s omnium) at the 2017 SEA Games.

She added that she will miss the mentor who told her bedtime stories when they roomed together while training and racing in the United States, and that Chan was “always willing to share her knowledge and stories from her cycling career”.

Chan is returning to teaching in June and, while she plans to take a long break from cycling, she has not ruled out a future role in the sport’s local governing body — the Singapore Cycling Federation.

Ditching her carbon-fibre competition bicycles, the former elite cyclist is now happy to ride share-bicycles around her neighbourhood instead, and says she has “never felt happier and more peaceful”.

“I’m ready to move onto the next (stage) of my life and I’m excited for what’s in store for me,” she said.

Cycling may be taking a backseat from her life, but Chan still has one dream that she would like to realise: To see the first cycling velodrome in Singapore.

Such a facility, said Chan, will be key to the development of elite cycling here. She said: “It will be a great help because you can run cycling programmes for kids, all the way to seniors in their 80s.”

She added: “It’ll definitely spark off something, as it’s so hard to ride on the road in Singapore. I can’t wait to see it happen.

“For Singapore cycling to succeed, we have to start at the grassroots level. I definitely think we can win a medal at the Asian Games, and have someone qualify for the Olympics in the future.”