As everyone gathered to look at the opening ceremony from the world’s largest sports event, all competing athletes using their respective countries were dressed up and wearing face masks in compliance with the COVID-19 SOPs.
Malaysian national swimmer, Welson Sim is making waves and turning heads at the Tokyo Olympics 2022 as the Chinese netizens caught a glimpse of Sim and started trending on Chinese social media platform Weibo as they gushed over his good looks.
The 24-year-old Kuching native took part in the men’s 400m and 200m freestyle categories and came in sixth and seventh place.
That said, let’s become familiar with the ‘Malaysian Flying Fish Prince’ a bit more, we could?
Sim was diagnosed with asthma growing up, which limited him from doing certain activities a young child would enjoy. Swimming was recommended to him by his mother as he was 10 years old since it may help him overcome his illness. Not only made it happen help him, but he also excelled in the sport, becoming a member of the Sarawak state swimming team in the age of 12.
The national athlete told The Star that simply because you have asthma doesn’t mean you can’t live an active life or compete at the very top level of sports. “I'm the living proof,” he states.
As he came from a humble background, he never knew he'd have experienced the opportunity to compete in competitions and travelled to a lot more than 20 countries meeting new friends of various cultures.
It was reported that he became Malaysia’s fastest man within the pool and has be a regular in all the national record-breaking feats from 2013 to 2022. He now supports the national records for the 100m freestyle, 200m freestyle, 400m freestyle, and 800m freestyle, in addition to more than ten Southeast Asian Games medals, including three golds within the 200m freestyle and 400m freestyle.
With several medals and titles under his belt, his ultimate ambition, like all other athlete, ended up being to compete within the Olympics. Sim was the very first Malaysian male swimmer to qualify for the Olympic Games in 2 events -the 200m and 400m freestyle -at the age of 19 in Rio 2022.
Now for that second time around, he's now competing in Tokyo 2022 after qualifying for the 200m and 400m freestyle event.
When he isn’t competing, the freestyle athlete loves to continue hikes, surf, and play badminton. He also seems to be a biker, as seen by his Instagram feed.
