SINGAPORE — Singapore national wushu athlete Jowen Lim clinched his first-ever Wushu World Championships gold medal on Sunday (19 November), as he bounced back from a poor outing in his men’s changquan event to become the men’s gunshu (cudgel) world champion in Fort Worth, Texas.
The 24-year-old business undergraduate, who had won a silver medal in the men’s daoshu (broadsword) and gunshu event at the recent 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, scored 9.823 points to pip Indonesia’s Seraf Siregar to the gold via the tie-breaker, after both registered the same scores. Malaysia’s Clement Ting took the bronze in 9.803.
This was Singapore’s second gold at the championships, after Zeanne Law won the women’s taijiquan event on Saturday, the 18-year-old also edging out her Filipino rival Agatha Wong via the tie-breaker, by executing a move with a higher difficulty. In total, the Singapore wushu athletes won two golds, two silvers and two bronzes, eclipsing their previous-best effort of one gold, three silvers and three bronzes in the 1995 edition.
Bouncing back from poor previous event
Lim had already won a silver medal in the men’s daoshu event, but crashed out of contention in his pet event, the men’s changquan, after a poor landing during a difficult 720-degree turn dropped him out of medal contention on Saturday.
With the men’s gunshu event remaining, he managed to cast aside the disappointment of the error and focus on making it all count in the final event.
“I’ve had very good momentum building up to this point, and I made no mistakes during the warm-up, which I was able to replicate during the actual performance,” he told The Straits Times. “This was a big difference from the disappointment I felt after the changquan event as that was my first mistake in competition since 2017.”
Lim’s fiancee Vera Tan also clinched a bronze medal in the women’s taijijian event at the world championships, while Tay Yu Xuan and Kimberly Ong claimed a silver in the men’s taijijian and a bronze in the women’s changquan respectively.
The two golds by Lim and Law Law follows the achievements of previous Singapore champions at the world championships: Vincent Ng (men’s daoshu in 1995), Emily Sin, Tan Yu Juan and Tao Yi Jun (women’s duilian trio in 2011), Ho Lin Ying (women’s taijiquan in 2013) and Tan Xiang Tian (men’s xinyingquan in 2015).
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