SINGAPORE: 2023 has been a banner year for Veronica Shanti Pereira, but the Sprint Queen is by no means resting on her laurels. Despite multiple medals in what has been the best year of her athletic career (so far, anyway), she’s looking forward to more heights to reach, saying “I’m not done yet” in a recent interview.
Ms Pereira, 27, made history by winning the gold medal in the 200m race at the Asian Games in Hangzhou on Monday (Oct 2), just forty-eight hours after she clinched the silver in the 100m event. The whole country rejoiced at her triumph, celebrating Singapore’s first gold medal in athletics in almost half a century. It was way back in 1974 when Chee Swee Lee won the women’s 400m.
The runner was in the middle of a media blitz even before she went home to a warm welcome in Singapore on Thursday (Oct 5). This included an interview with Olympics.com, where she showed that she has no plans of slowing down.
When the interviewer said that her wins have put her in the same league as Olympic champion swimmer Joseph Schooling and former badminton world champ Loh Kean Yew, Ms Pereira was pleased, but remained modest. “First of all, that’s a huge honour to be tagged with those two, they are Olympic and world champions. That’s a huge honour and truly amazing,” she said,
She was also asked, “With many Singaporeans familiar with Schooling and Loh’s stories and profiles by now, what should they know about Shanti?”
Ms Pereira said that this was “a tough question,” but added, “What I want people to know about me? I don’t know. I think I’ve been through a lot in my career but simply… I’m not done yet.”
Ms Pereira is the country’s first sprint champion at the Asian Games and has racked up an impressive gold medal tally so far this year. Having won golds in both the 100m and 200m races at the South East Asian Games in May, she followed this up in mid-July by claiming back-to-back wins at the Asian Athletics Championships in Bangkok in the same events, where she also broke the national record for the 100m with a time of 11.20s.
In August, she also qualified for the 200m event at the Paris Olympics in 2024 and is the only Asian to have qualified for the 200m semi-finals at the World Championships.
On Thursday evening, the runner posted photos on her Instagram account simply captioned “ours!!!!! ❤️🔥🫀🫶🏽,” wherein she featured her coach, Mr Luis Cunha; her boyfriend, fellow runner Tan Zong Yang, her parents, Clarence and Jeet Pereira, as well as other Singapore athletes.
/TISG
KF Seetoh: Don’t do selfies with just Shanti; support all our athletes