Sports Minutes: The inspiring story of Gemma Rose Foo; Premature to Podium

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Sports Minutes with Zia-ul Raushan on Money FM 89.3.

**Zia-ul Raushan** (0:06)
Money FM 89.3, it's time for Sports Minutes with me, Zia-ul Raushan. Now, the domestic football season may have come to a standstill, but not conversation surrounding Singapore sports. And on today's show, we are casting the spotlight on team Singapore's Gemma Rose Foo. How did she go from being born three and a half months premature, and being diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth, to now flying the nation's flag loud and proud, working towards her fourth Paralympic Games appearance? Well, Gemma blocked out all the noise and defied all the odds. And this is her inspiring story. Gemma, a huge welcome to Sports Minutes. To start with, how are you doing?

**Gemma Rose Foo** (0:45)
I'm doing great. I'm so excited to be here. It's my first time in the studio, so thank you for having me.

**Zia-ul Raushan** (0:50)
Gemma, it's a huge privilege to have you in the studio, especially for your first radio interview. So for the benefit of the listeners, perhaps please introduce yourself. Tell us what you do.

**Gemma Rose Foo** (1:00)
So I'm Gemma Rose Foo and I'm a para equestrian athlete with a special focus on the para dressage discipline. So I represent Team Singapore in the Paralympic Games and many other international competitions. So it's always such a huge honor for me to represent the country.

**Zia-ul Raushan** (1:20)
And it's a huge honor for me to be in the company of a national athlete like yourself. We're gonna talk about that sporting journey, that amazing sporting journey. But could you perhaps first shed some light on your disability?

**Gemma Rose Foo** (1:31)
I have a disability called cerebral palsy. And this is due to my early birth at five and a half months. And I weighed 580 grams. So I was the size of my dad's palm. And my parents actually call me their miracle baby. So I kind of beat the odds of survival. Because usually for people who have early births like me, who are premature, they don't really make it. And I'm just so blessed to be here. And despite my disability, I'm able to do things that lots of people believe that I'm not able to. So this disability affects mostly my legs and the way I walk. And this is why I use crutches.

**Zia-ul Raushan** (2:13)
Thank you for sharing that. And thank you for having the courage to come and speak about this, because I think you're an inspiration, not just to our listeners, but to Singapore as a whole. And we'll dive deep into that journey. We'll also talk about your dad, Anthony, who's in the studio with us. But let's talk about flying that flag, right? To be premature and 580 grams, then to now be representing the flag. It's some journey. Along the way, horses came into the picture. How did this love affair start?

**Gemma Rose Foo** (2:40)
You know, it was a total kismet accident, and not really accident, more like a fated meeting with horses, because I started riding as a form of therapy, this therapeutic riding called hippotherapy. Hippotherapy actually worked with my balance and coordination. So I started riding at this place called the Riding for Disabled Association in Singapore. So that's where I got on the back of a horse. I got to feel the horse. And I've always loved animals. So that felt like the natural way to go.
And because I lack the ability to run, by being on the horse, I could feel what it was like to be in constant movement and having the freedom to do what I wanted and having the guidance to kind of tell the horse what to do. And this therapeutic riding kind of progressed into independent riding. So instead of what we call sidewalkers helping me to like maneuver the horse, I was riding by myself. After I started riding by myself, one of my trainers is like, why not you try riding in these competitions? So when I was like about 12 years old or maybe even younger, I competed in my first national competition in Singapore. That was my first introduction to the world of dressage. And at those national competitions, I did so well. About two years later, my current national coach, who's based in Germany, was looking to form a Singapore team, to form the first Asian pair of question team.
So I got lucky. He was in Singapore to look for potential riders. He said, okay, he saw me, he's like, you come, try, why not, you try to join our team. I did eventually join the team. It all started when he kind of like put a bunch of riders together. I said, okay. And we went for a competition in Taiwan 2010 That was the first regional competition I'd been to. Back then, I didn't really have a clue what pair of dressage was. I would say it was a very lucky accident that I discovered the sport at all, because I didn't know there was a sport where people with disabilities could ride a horse. So after the Taiwan competition, we felt that, okay, it's a sport I want to understand more. I want to really compete in this sport. So by the time 2011 rolled over, we had this amazing idea. Why not try for the London 2012 Paralympics? So in about a year or two, I was competing on international stages in the UK. The UK was my first international competition. And back then, it's like, oh, we don't have a horse. How are we going to find that horse? So we actually pulled a horse who was 21 years old out of retirement. Wow. Yeah. And my teammate and I had to share this 21 year old horse in the same competition. And the thing about the competition is that for para sport, we have a graded system. So the differences between those grades are according to the severity of disability. So from grade one to five, it will be the most severe to the least severe persons with disabilities. And these classifiers, classifiers according to what they see. For example, there are riders in the higher grades who do not have limbs.