February 26, 2024
SINGAPORE – For a fifth year running, Singaporean jumper Tia Rozario has missed reunion dinner with her family as she pursues sport and studies in the United States. But in this Year of the Dragon, she has been rewarded for her leap of faith and sacrifice with two national records in the women’s indoor triple and long jumps.
At the Feb 22-24 Atlantic Coast Conference Indoor Championships in Boston, she finished fifth in the triple jump, clearing 12.81m, and 11th in the long jump with a 5.82m leap to conclude the indoor season on a high.
These distances are improvements on the 12.79m and 5.80m marks she set at the Virginia Tech Doc Hale Meet on Feb 3.
The 23-year-old told The Straits Times: “I’m very happy with the results and with closing off the season with a lot of consistency over the past two months. This has been my best indoor season and it is a good set-up for the outdoor track which is my focus as we work towards the 2025 SEA Games and 2026 Asian Games qualification.
“I would attribute the records to a very good and consistent training environment that has a very fun setting with all the jumpers being here for one another during difficult periods.
“The outdoor season starts in March and my first meet will be in Miami. There’s no wind for the indoor events, while the outdoor tailwind will help me jump further and I hope I can use that to my advantage.”
Rozario is currently competing for Duke University, where she is pursuing a master’s in biomedical science after she had completed her four-year degree in neuroscience at Princeton University.
While she misses reunion dinners and Chinese New Year festivities, she is glad to have her coach and teammates as her second family away from home. Her coach Tatijana Jacobson bought her a nian gao (new year rice cake) decorated with a lion dance head as they were preparing for a meet over the Chinese New Year weekend.
Rozario, whose father is Eurasian of Portuguese descent while her mum is Chinese, said: “My grandmother would prepare hotpot and my cousins would gather at my place to have steamboat. For the past five years, I wasn’t able to be part of that as the Chinese New Year period is also school term in the States.
“It is definitely a sacrifice but I’m very lucky my family is very supportive of what I do, and we still celebrate through Zoom and Facetime calls.”
However, she turned coy, laughing and declining comment when asked if she had anyone to celebrate Valentine’s Day and Yuan Xiao Jie with. The latter is the last day of the 15-day celebrations and also known as the Chinese Valentine’s Day.
She was more chatty about her new love for triple jump, despite her still being some distance away from the SEA Games qualifying mark of 13.45m. The long jump qualifying distance is 6.02m.
Rozario, who set the outdoor triple jump national record of 12.92m in 2023, said: “Triple jump is my main event now. I started proper training in triple jump only from 2019 and I’m still learning. I have a lot of confidence in my progression but there’s still a lot of room for improvement, which is exciting as I’m still nowhere near my full potential.”
National jumps coach Valeri Obidko noted that she can become a SEA Games medal prospect in the triple jump if they resume their partnership after she graduates from Duke in May.
He explained how there are two jump pits facing different wind directions at outdoor events and officials will pick the one that is more favourable for athletes depending on the conditions. Owing to the variability between indoor and outdoor conditions, there can be up to half a metre difference in distance.
Obidko, who coached Rozario previously for four years, added: “We are quite happy with Tia’s progress. She is improving slowly and steadily as she produces stable results. She is technically sound and still needs to improve in terms of strength and speed training.
“Based on the videos she has sent back and my experience working with Thai jumpers from 2016 to 2023, I believe my programme can help her make more progress in the triple jump with proper training and preparation.
“Tia would already have around five months of preparatory work by the time she graduates. If she returns to Singapore, we could then give her more heavy training and more loading before she competes again when the SEA Games qualifying windows open at the end of the year or the start of 2025.”