'Keep chasing your passions': Meet the ski speedster set to represent Singapore at the Winter Olympics
Faiz Basha will become only the second Singaporean to compete in the Winter Olympics.
by Matthew Mohan · CNA · JoinRead a summary of this article on FAST.
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SINGAPORE: Faiz Basha will become Singapore's first alpine skier at the Winter Olympics next month, but it is not his first brush with fame.
About six years ago, he landed an internship with the Land Transport Authority (LTA), after a proposed MRT map design he shared online went viral.
"I've always liked trains and planes, I'm quite nerdy when it comes to those things. And I always found the old Singapore MRT map to be quite aesthetically unpleasing. So I had a go at designing it myself," he told CNA.
During Faiz’s internship with LTA, he was invited to see the map they were working on and give his input.
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Redesigning MRT maps is not his only passion. When he takes to the slopes next month at the Stelvio Ski Centre in Bormio, Italy, he will be only the second Singaporean to compete in a Winter Olympics.
SKIING WITH "NO FEAR"
Faiz started skiing after moving to Switzerland when he was three. His father, a diplomat, had been posted there and the family relocated.
"When I was in the preschools over there, you have your physical education (classes). Maybe in Singapore, you play volleyball or football, but in Switzerland, they will take you up to the mountain once a week and teach you to ski," he recalled.
Picking up the sport at a young age came with certain benefits. "When you're very young, you don't have fear," he said. "It gave me a lot of the correct instincts."
Faiz, who also learnt skiing from his mother, Madam Sharifah Albar, recalled how he was a bit "unhinged" on the slopes.
"Everybody has a different personality on the slope. For me, I was a bit more unhinged," he said.
"I remember being quite notorious in my class for being like that ... I was quite disruptive to my group because I had no fear, and I like to ski fast."
It was this desire to go fast that saw him start competing in his early teenage years. While these were not major events, losing rankled.
"This was the first competitive sport that I was really into ... In my first year of competitions, I really didn't do well. And it really hit me ... I was complaining to my parents, sometimes I was even crying."
Faiz started training with a club. Eventually, a coach helped plant the seed of a dream.
"That was when I started to improve quite a lot. I started to develop some really good fundamentals in ski racing," he said.
"He was the first one who introduced me to this bigger picture – that it's not just about high school, middle school races.
"What comes next is, obviously, you have your national championships, you have your continental cups, you have your Asian Games, and then afterwards you have the Olympics."
TRAUMATIC ACCIDENT
Then came a major setback when he was 14.
A "traumatic accident" during a race saw him rupture an intestine on the slopes and he needed to be airlifted to a hospital for emergency surgery.
"Everything was building up and then it just came crashing down," he recalled.
"For me, the effect was more psychological. When you don't have any bones broken, fortunately for me, the recovery is a lot faster. But psychologically, it took a lot more."
There were times in the aftermath of the injury that he wanted to call it quits.
"The first time I did training after the injury, I crashed (on) my first run, my second run and my third run. I started to hurt myself again, and then I went home and (I said) I'm done with this sport," he said.
"With the accident, it was very difficult to get back that mindset of being able to ski fast ... because the more fear you have, the more you hesitate – in fact, the more dangerously you ski. So it was a very difficult hurdle for me to get through."
But eventually, things clicked, and with his mother's encouragement, he pressed on. "I think one of the most beautiful things we have as humans is the ability to forget," added Faiz.
Skiing had been predominantly more of an "escape" for him. It was after completing his high school diploma that he started thinking about furthering his competitive ambitions.
"That's when I decided, I'm pretty good at skiing, so we should maybe see where we can take that," he said.
While Faiz had been hoping to qualify and compete at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, national service meant that dream was put on hold. But he persevered.
"I got into roller skating. I tried a few things, like ice skating ... some things in the gym as well. And the roller skating was the most similar, in feeling to skiing," he said. "It helped to teach me how to create speed."
During his off days, he would also "mess around" with skates and train on the running track outside the National Stadium.
"And I started to learn about the different skates, the different wheels, and I would engineer the skates differently so that they could carve a different radius," he said.
"ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE"
After completing national service in 2022, Faiz headed to New Zealand, where he trained under coach Alessio Bonardi and worked on his fundamentals.
"I think if I didn't meet him, I wouldn't have made the improvements which I needed to make," Faiz said.
"He saw the drive in me and also the technique which I had. He said, 'you have a lot of speed and you ski with a lot of aggression but your fundamentals are (bad)'."
Rather than doing race course training, the pair went back to the basics.
In January last year, Faiz met the qualifying mark for the slalom event, and more recently did so for the giant slalom event.
To meet the criteria for the Games, athletes compete at various races during the official qualification window, with the average of the five best results from continental cups or major international races taken into consideration.
"I felt a little bit weird after qualifying for the Olympics, because I'm (from) a small country, I'm not really competing against anybody else in the country," he said.
"It doesn't mean that I'm not at a high level, but there's still so much more, so much further for me to go, but the whole world thinks I've already reached the end."
Faiz will be the first Singaporean to compete in alpine skiing at the Winter Olympics. Prior to this, the only Singaporean to compete at the Winter Olympics was skater Cheyenne Goh.
Apart from qualifying for the Olympics, Faiz has also registered several milestones.
He was the top-ranked Southeast Asian athlete (12th) at the 2025 Asian Winter Games and the first Singaporean to reach the finals at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships.
The Winter Olympics are not the end for Faiz, whose eventual goal is to get closer to the podium at the Asian Winter Games.
While competitive skiing may not be a "very good idea" for Singaporeans, given that they need to pick it up from a young age, he hopes that his journey to the Games can inspire others.
"I hope that it can show people that anything is possible, that in whatever endeavour you do, not to give up, to keep chasing your passions, and to have that belief that it can be done even if everything is pushing against you."
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