Karate exponent Marissa Hafezan leads golden day for Singapore at SEA Games

SINGAPORE: Karate exponent Marissa Hafeza won Singapore's first gold in the sport at the SEA Games in 32 years on Friday (Dec 12), launching a golden day for the country.

Hafezan beat Vietnam's Nguyen Thi Dieu Ly 5-3 in the final of the women's kumite under 55kg event at the Chaeng Watthana Government Complex in Bangkok to secure the medal.

Singapore's last – and previously only – SEA Games karate champion was Neo Ah Suan, who took gold in the women's kumite 60kg and above event at the 1993 Games hosted by the country.

Prior to Hafezan's victory, Singapore had not won a karate medal of any colour at a Games since 2011.

In other wins for Singapore on Friday, Low Jiang Hao came in first out of 11 in the men's shotgun skeet individual preliminaries before repeating his performance in the final to win the gold medal. 

It was his first gold medal at a SEA Games.

Artistic swimmers Debbie Soh and Yvette Chong also finished first out of five in their women's duet event, with a total score of 474.5046 to clinch the gold medal, as well as a new personal best.

Singapore's Peter Gilchrist took back his men's billiards singles crown from Myanmar's Pauk Sa with a 3-0 win, after losing in back-to-back SEA Games finals to his rival.

Prior to that, he had taken gold in the event in six straight editions of the SEA Games - from 2009 to 2019.