Flair for fencing, love for local fare

At a packed Samy’s Curry restaurant on a Friday evening, Amita Berthier fits in among a multi-racial crowd of diners despite being decked out in T-shirt and shorts with a giant training bag by her side.

When the food arrives, the left-handed Singapore fencer duly scoops a few dollops of yogurt onto her banana-leaf bed of rice – almost as if it’s the only way she enjoys South Indian fare – revealing a tattoo of Olympic rings inked on her forearm.

“Once in a while,” says the Olympics-bound athlete, when I ask her if she ever eats with her fingers. “When I’m at my grandparents’ house, yes, otherwise no.”

The 23-year-old, whose full name is Amita Marie Nicolette Berthier, declines the squid curry dish – because she’s “not a sotong girl”.

“But I like the mutton; it’s got the right level of spice.”

Raised by a French father and a Malayali mother, Amita mulls over my next question of whether her upbringing leaned more towards East or West.

“I think I’m Singaporean more than anything,” says Amita, who took Malay as a second language in school and speaks a smattering of French.

“I love my prata, my char kway teow, oh, and durians. I love durian anything – cakes or puffs or whatever.

“I grew up very Singaporean, even my dad was very Singaporean. He lived here for over 20 years after university in Japan, so he was super cultured in that sense, and probably the least ‘French person’ I knew; he even spoke with a Singlish accent, just like I do.”

In 2016, Amita’s father, Eric, died in a workplace accident at age 51. Vacations to France were an annual tradition for the family before the incident, but in recent years, Amita along with her mum and three siblings, have visited the old country just once every few years.

Her paternal grandparents Guy and Danielle, who are in their 80s, live in a “vyeh-ree” small village in Lyon, Amita says in a playful demonstration of her French accent. She is set for a reunion with them when she heads to Paris to compete in the Olympics from July 26 to Aug 11 – her second outing in the multi-sport showpiece.

A sociology graduate from the University of Notre Dame in the United States, where she competed in National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) tournaments for the past four years, Amita is articulate as she tells me about her preparations for the Olympics, acknowledging as well the expectation that she is among the Republic’s best hopes for a medal in Paris.

In her Games debut at Tokyo 2020, she suffered an opening-round exit in the women’s foil at the hands of eventual gold medallist Lee Kiefer of the US, whom Amita regards as her hero.

“I work well with pressure. Competing in the NCAA helped a lot with that – it was just a different kind of adrenaline,” says the three-time champion at the South-east Asia (SEA) Games who secured her ticket to Paris via ranking points.

Ranked 28th in the world and seventh in Asia in the women’s foil, she claimed crucial points at the Grand Prix in Washington DC earlier this year by finishing joint-20th.

“During my qualifying bout (in DC), I was trailing 12-14 and the referee was against me. But I stayed calm and told myself: ‘I am going to win this’. And I did (15-14). I realised if I could win that difficult bout, anything is possible.”

Her stint in the US, where she trained under renowned fencing coach Amgad Khazbak, has been a successful one by some measure.

As part of the Notre Dame fencing team, she won the NCAA Fencing Championships team title in 2021 and 2022.

In 2022, she was named the Women’s Foil Athlete of the Year by the United States Fencing Coaches Association.

And last year, Amita claimed a historic bronze at the Asian Fencing Championships in Wuxi, China, before reaching the quarter-finals at the Asian Games in Hangzhou.

Khazbak will not be in Amita’s corner in Paris, as he also works with Kiefer during major competitions. For that reason, she has returned home to work with national foil head coach Oleg Matseichuk.

“I was reluctant to return here to train initially, because I was very comfortable in the US and I didn’t want to change that up so soon before the Olympics.

“But I also needed a coach that would be there for me – and I knew Oleg could offer that. I like the camaraderie that we have.”

Matseichuk, from Ukraine, and Amita didn’t take long to hit it off, she says, before impersonating her coach – “Hyelo Amita” – with perfect intonation and inflection.

By now, it’s clear that aside from fencing, Amita also has a flair for accents. And that while she engages in a sport of a duelling nature, when her foil mask is off, she’s one of the most disarming and gregarious people you’ll meet.

But just how did she come to pick up the sport?

I cite an article from a few years ago that quotes her saying it was the Zorro movies that sparked her interest, after being enthralled by Antonio Banderas’ character.

Amita laughs this off.

“I think I mentioned Zorro to the reporter and he wrote it the way he did. But the truth is, I was really into football when I was in (Raffles Girls’ Primary School), but the school didn’t have that as a CCA (co-curricular activity) at the time.

“Then one day, I was with my sister (Aarya) at United Square and we chanced upon a fencing school, Z Fencing, and we stepped in to give it a shot. The coaches there told our parents that we were naturals – though I’m not sure if it was just to get us to sign up. But the rest, as they say, is history.”

The youngest in the family, Amita comes from a sporting household: Eric did judo and was a football and Formula One fanatic, her mother Uma was an athlete (she is now a teacher), while her elder siblings Ashok, 34, and Aishwarya, 31 – finance professionals in London and New York respectively – played hockey and netball at school level.

Aarya, 25, also went on to become a national fencer for a brief period, and was a regular sparring partner for Amita up until recently. She is now a lawyer at a local firm.

“I’m actually very close to my family even though we all live apart,” says Amita, who, in preparation for the Olympics, trains twice a day and resides at the Singapore Sports School.

“During this period though, I’ve barely been able to see anyone. The one time I had a day off and where I actually saw people was during Vishu (Malayali New Year; April 14) when I went to my grandma’s house.

“It’s been rough, but my family and close friends are very understanding, they know what my focus is for this period.”

Towards the end of the dinner, as Amita crunches on her last papadum for the evening, I ask the million-dollar question: Is there a boyfriend in the mix?

“No,” she says. “But I think it’s because I measure everyone up to see if they compare with my dad – and so that’s why no one ever seems good enough.

“But whoever comes along doesn’t have to love fencing. He just has to be supportive of me.”