KUALA LUMPUR — She headed into the women’s wakeboard competition in Kuala Lumpur as the favourite and on Saturday morning (Aug 26), Sasha Christian lived up to expectations and retained her SEA Games title.

It meant that the 24-year-old Singaporean, who posted an impressive score of 62.78 – 15.11 points more than silver medallist Galuh Mutiara Maulinda – remains undefeated in the event since it was first held in 2011 and again in 2015.

The score was higher than her previous winning ones, though this particular triumph felt “different” as she had only returned to wakeboarding near the end of January this year.

In July last year, an awkward landing during a training session left Christian with a fractured right tibia and ended her season. It was her longest ever injury layoff and even after resuming practice, she had to battle self-doubt.

“I was really nervous coming into this competition…and I’ve been using the last few months to really build up my mental strength,” she said.

“I think the pressure built up because obviously, there are more expectations and everyone is like ‘she'll be okay’ but in your mind, you're still nervous.

“You'd think you'd get less nervous over the years, but that's not true for me."

“I literally just tie my handle to a pole and pretend I’m wakeboarding and that seems to work!” she laughed.

“I think I've learned that I've just got to remember how it feels like on the water and just mimic (that) whenever I can… like before my competition run, I'm just missing for half an hour because I’m just doing land practice by myself.”

This Games is Christian’s third wakeboarding competition since coming back. In March, she was involved in a meet in Jakarta to qualify for the Games and was then involved in a pre-Games competition almost a month ago.

An intense training stint over May and June in South Florida, in the United States, boosted Christian’s confidence and left her “super pumped up” even though it rained briefly during the competition.

Revealing what she told team-mate Gooi Jia Yi, who took bronze, Christian said: “Whatever happens, we've wakeboarded through more challenging situations, so there’s no need to worry about anything – (be it) the water or weather, we've done it all and that kind of confidence is needed to go into the finals.”

Christian, who will begin her individual slalom title defence on Monday, has learned not to take anything for granted but her self-belief has started to return.

“To go out there and still do it, I’m proud of myself because I haven’t let anything get to me, to my head and I've remained as determined,” she said.

“I feel like I am back.”