Brenda competing in the women’s 50m Butterfly – S5 S5 qualifying event at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Championships at the Tokyo Aquatic Center today. – Bernama photo
TOKYO (Aug 27): For someone who had just broken the Asian record at the Paralympic Games, national swimmer Brenda Anellia Larry sat in the toilet of the tournament venue a forlorn and disconsolate figure.
All because she failed to fulfil her mission: to dip below one minute in the women’s 50-metre (m) butterfly event in the S4 (physical impairment) category at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre here today.
The 16-year-old, who was born without both arms, had earlier clocked 1:00.62 seconds (s) to erase her own record of 1:09.72s that she did at the 2019 World Series Singapore.
Brenda, who actually swam in the S5 category (due to a lack of participants for the S4 category) in her Paralympic debut here, finished last in the second heat and 13th out of 14 swimmers overall.
Only the best eight swimmers from the two heats progressed to the final.
“She was crying soon after she left the pool and she continued to cry inside the toilet here.
“I told her there was no need to cry because she had just broken her own Asian record, but she was so upset at failing to do her best,” her coach Eva Wong told Bernama.
Eva, who is proud of Brenda’s achievement and believes that she has the potential to go faster, hopes that the teenager channel her frustration and disappointment into giving her everything when she competes in her pet event, the 50m backstroke, on Friday (Sept 3).
Eva, who has been coaching Brenda since 2016, hopes there will be a single S4 category for the women’s butterfly event at the 2024 Paralympics in Paris.
“At the moment, all women’s butterfly event swimmers from the S1 to S5 categories have to compete in S5. I hope there’ll be a single S4 event in the future,” she said. – Bernama