The Boy comes of age

For quah zheng wen the world is at his feet

- Farhan Shah

In two hours, the cavernous OCBC Aquatic Centre will be filled with people. There will be swimmers in its Olympic-sized pool, their sweat stirred into the chlorinated liquid by rapid strokes of their arms splicing through the water. There will be the three coaches on terra firma, blasting hip hop music from Bluetooth speakers and whistling hypnotically in time to the swimmers’ strokes.

But right now, there’s just Quah Zheng Wen and me, a comfortable silence congealing between us. We’re seated in the stands, occupying two of the 3,000 plastic chairs spread across the upper levels, our feet propped on the backs of the seats in front of. A few weeks after our conversation, Zheng Wen will leave this watery sanctum, where he’s been religiously training this past year, for the United States, before journeying on to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to surprise the world in the 2016 Summer Olympics. That is the plan.

Great Expectations Zheng Wen has been in this position before. He was part of the Singapore swim team for the London Olympics four years ago, then a mere 15-year-old teenager overawed by the momentous occasion and the big names whom he was sharing the locker room with. He failed to get past the heats.

This time around, Zheng Wen is better prepared, and there is a palpable scent of hope wafting in the country’s air that 2016 might finally be the year when ‘Majulah Singapura’ is played from the Olympic stadiums of Rio.

“This is different from London in 2012,” says Zheng Wen. “There are higher expectations placed on me and I’m genuinely looking forward to the Games.”