With some 30-odd people hoisting “Welcome Home” banners at an arrival hall in Changi Airport, many might have assumed it was a victorious athlete returning home late from the Paris Olympics on Tuesday.
But it wasn’t kitesurfer Max Maeder or track star Shanti Pereira the crowd were waiting and cheering for – it was little-known 18-year-old Laavinia Jaiganth.
The track prodigy had just accomplished something no Singaporean under the age of 20 has in 50 years – she clocked 54.66sec in the women’s 400m at the World Athletics Under-20 Championships in Lima, Peru.
Though her time on Aug 28 was not enough for her progress to the semi-finals, it was enough to eclipse Chee Swee Lee’s old mark of 55.08sec set at the 1974 Asian Games in Tehran, Iran, where Chee bagged the gold medal.
“My efforts in training paid off. I am happy to be able to attain this extraordinary achievement. The support of my coach, family and loved ones brought me this far,” Laavinia told tabla!
Before the race, Laavinia, a second-year student in Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s business school, trained intensely for two-and-a-half weeks, running at a high-altitude training ground in Quito, Ecuador.
“Training at high-altitude really helped when we went to sea level in Peru, because the oxygen levels changed,” she said.
“It was a very committed two weeks to hit my personal best. For most of the days I was training twice a day.”
She had qualified for the meet via a universality slot as the best-performing female U-20 athlete. Her previous best was 56.86sec at the Singapore Open in April.
This is the second record-breaking achievement for Singaporean runners this season, after sprint queen Shanti Pereira bettered the national 400m mark with her 53.67sec effort at the Florida Relays on March 30.
Dipna Lim-Prasad’s previous mark of 54.18sec was set at the 2017 SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur.
Laavinia’s coach Fabian William, who accompanied her back home, described her experience as one which he had learnt much from.
“It has been quite an interesting journey, because as a coach, I think I have learnt from watching her, how she responds to emotions and functions under pressure,” he said.
“So now is the challenging part where we have to sit down and decide, okay, what’s the next step?”
Father Jaiganth Arumugam, 51, expressed happiness that his youngest daughter’s hard work paid off.
He explained Laavinia had decided to become an athlete while in primary school, and since then he and his wife Letchumi have supported her “through encouragement, motivation and definitely, once in a while, discipline”.
“I’m definitely very proud of her. She has surpassed our expectations, and I think her own.”
