Tokyo Olympian Kiria, the first Singaporean Women’s Epeeist to qualify for the Olympic Games for Singapore, has once again qualified for her second Games and will be traveling to compete in Paris come July 2024!
It had been a grueling and intense qualifying season for her, but also a rewarding one with plenty of achievements. In the final qualifying competition for the Olympic games, the Nanjing World Cup held in March, Kiria reached an amazing milestone by reaching Top 16 in the competition. Her achievement was all the more sweet considering the opponents she beat along the way: one was the 2023 European Champion, another was an individual double bronze medalist at two separate World Championships. This is the best ever result by any Singaporean Women’s Epeeist and no mean feat, considering that even Olympic medalists and top fencers can crash out at the Top 64 stage of World Cup competitions.
With the wind in her sails, Kiria took to the stage confidently at the Fujairah Asian Qualifiers in April. The qualifying competition always pits the top fencers from all across Asia (in the 2024 edition excluding the Korean, Chinese, and Hong Kong fencers who already qualified); only the winner gets the spot for the Paris Games. She first beat the representative from Philippines, before holding off a strong challenge from the Mongolian. In the final, she defeated the 2nd seeded fencer from India to win the competition and earn her place in her second Olympics!
Off the back of this historic result, she posted another excellent result at the Fujairah World Cup. May 2024 saw Kiria return to the site of the Asian Qualifiers just a month prior, where she powered through her opponents with emphatic victories to emerge 2nd in the preliminery round. In the Top 64, she faced stiff resistance from a powerful Chinese athlete, thus ending her World Cup season with a very respectable run.
Paris 2024, here we come! The next few months will be focused on training for the Games. We’ll be sending pictures and updates on our instagram page, so follow us to keep up with the latest news on the Road To Paris!