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Gymnast Farah Ann Abdul Hadi trains for four hours a day, seven days a week, with only Chinese New Year and Hari Raya off. Almost immediately after winning six medals at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Singapore in June, she was off to Gwangju, Korea for the World University Games. After Korea came the

Artistic Gymnastics Asian Championships in Hiroshima, then the Singapore Open Gymnastics Championships in September, followed by the World Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow in October. Her schedule is relentless. Perhaps that’s why she was the only female gymnast to medal in all categories at the SEA Games. She is relentless.

Farah Ann’s foray into the world of horizontal bars and crash mats began at the age of three, and her dedication hasn’t wavered in the 19 years since. At the SEA Games she won gold in floor exercises and team artistic gymnastics, a silver for individual all-round performance, and bronze medals for the vault, uneven bars and balance beam. But as we all know, for a small but vocal minority those achievements were overshadowed by what she was wearing. The ‘scandal’ erupted when Astro Awani published a picture on Facebook that showed Farah Ann, clad in the sparkly

purple and white leotard of the Malaysian artistic gymnastic team, proudly clutching her gold medal for floor exercises. Cue trolls crawling out of the woodwork to inform her that her leotard was lewd, and misguided keyboard warriors using religion as a platform to shame a brilliant young woman into knowing her place in a chauvinistic society. The incident made headlines as far away as the UK and France.

“When I got back from the SEA Games, there were a lot of supportive comments,” Farah Ann says during our shoot. “But for every 10 nice comments, there would be one negative one, and that’s the one that will make you feel down the whole day.”

Before we met, Farah Ann had told us that she didn’t want to comment on the fuss made about her attire because she felt an answer was unnecessary, and there was no reason to make an issue out of it. It is an admirably mature stance, one that can’t be attributed to her critics. At the time of the debacle, her only public response was to tweet: ‘Empty cans make the most noise’. At just 21, Farah Ann has perfected the mic drop.

Of course, we have to bring it up, and when we do she freezes. But the makeup artist and her mascara brush have Farah Ann captive, and she’s far too poised to be rude. Once

She went from relative anonymity to being one of the most famous young women in Malaysia overnight. Samantha

Joseph meets the little gymnast who roared.

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Sweater, Giorgio Armani

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she realises we’re more interested in her views than gossip, the megawatt smile returns. “At one point I actually shut off my Google alerts,” she says. “When I got back from the Games, there were like 30 alerts a day. It was a bit crazy.”

It’s not like gymnasts only recently began wearing leotards. The outfits were the same in the ’90s heyday of Malaysian gymnastics, when rhythmic gymnasts Sarina Sundara Rajah and Farrah-Hani Imran were in the spotlight. And we aren’t the only ones who think Farah Ann’s critics are fantastically missing the point. As Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin pointed out, no one says anything about male swimmers in tiny Speedos. And just before our shoot, Farah Ann picked up a congratulatory letter from the Sultan of Selangor at his palace, which outlined support for her and condemnation of her detractors.

A Facebook page called Farah Ann Abdul Hadi for Malaysia also sprang up. “Someone told me about it. It felt really… nice,” she says. An appreciative comment of Farah Ann’s is pinned to the top of the page. “It was nice to be appreciated. It wasn’t just a fanpage, it was a support page.” Pop culture arbiter Buzzfeed even made a video about her. “Did you see the video?” she laughs. “There was sad music and all these pictures of me. It was nice la, but it’s really nowhere as bad as they’re making it out to be.”

It seems very much like she’s taking all of this — the criticism, the media attention (a cover story photoshoot with Women’s Health happened earlier in the week, and another shoot is scheduled for the weekend), and the scrutiny — in her stride. There’s only one thing Farah

Ann is concerned about, and that is winning. Although much has already been said about her appearance,

what with her regular features in ‘Best Looking Athletes at the SEA Games’ lists, it’s difficult not to remark on it. Once the shoot begins and a couple of face shots are in, the entire production team can’t help cooing over the results on the photographer’s screen. “Camilla Belle,” says our fashion editor, although I’m leaning towards a younger Eva Green myself. I’ve been told that Farah Ann did a few commercials as a tot, and it’s impossible to imagine her going through a gawky child phase — she seems to have gone directly from self-assured child model to the elegant young woman she is now.

Her parents, Abdul Hadi Ahmad and Kimberly Ann Gagnon, sent her to gymnastics classes hoping they would tame her excess energy. She says she would have tantrums, screaming and crying for no reason, and gymnastics helped calm her down. It quickly became apparent that she had a talent for it. She was seven when she participated in her first event.

“At one point I actually shut off my Google alerts. When I got back from the Games,

there were like 30 alerts a day. It was a bit crazy.”

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“I remember it because the leos (leotards) that we wore were the same as the ones worn by the KL team — we were the Selangor team, I was with my sister (Katrina Ann Abdul Hadi, synchronized swimmer on the national team). We had short sleeves and the KL team had long sleeves. At first we were all like ‘OMG OMG’, and then we were like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to beat them!’ And I was the smallest one on the team,” she giggles, and we all imagine a tiny, bloodthirsty Farah Ann with the will of steel and hunger to win that’s obviously still there. “I remember I kept that leotard until I really couldn’t wear it anymore. It was like a snakeskin-patterned leotard, grey and black snakeskin.”

It may seem like Farah Ann’s time is split between the two pursuits of gymnastics and sleeping, but she’s also studying International Relations at Monash University’s Malaysia campus. She’s realistic about the longevity, or lack of it, of a gymnast’s career. And while her parents were more than happy to ferry their yowling kid to lessons every day, they’ve never become the type of parents whose lives revolve around their children’s achievements, which has helped to give Farah Ann perspective about life outside gymnastics.

“My parents have always been very supportive. They never would say ‘Oh, you have to go for this competition or that one,’” she says. “There was a point in time when I was feeling a bit upset, and I didn’t know if I wanted to continue or not, as I had a few injuries. They told me, ‘If you want to stop, you can stop. Everything is your choice.’”

She admits that she’s hard on herself. “My mother’s always telling me not to stress out before a competition, because she knows I’m very competitive and I put a lot of pressure on myself.” For someone who uses the seconds before a routine to “think about the mistakes I might make and try not to make them” as a way to calm herself down, “a lot of pressure” is about right.

But it’s clear the pressure comes only because she knows she’s capable of delivering. After winning a silver medal for the uneven bars at her debut SEA Games in Palembang in 2011, she told a national newspaper that she was going for gold in Singapore. And she got it, twice over in fact, breaking Malaysia’s eight-year gold medal dry spell in gymnastics. At the recent Korean Universiade she achieved a personal best by placing sixth in the individual all-round event.

Farah Ann is knife-blade precise when talking about gymnastics, thoroughly analysing the reasons behind her individual gold at the SEA Games: a combination of a difficult routine and immaculate execution. At the same time, she firmly dismisses critics who argue that Filipina gymnast Ava Verdeflor should have won. “She didn’t have the skills,” she says carefully but firmly. “She was clean, but she didn’t have a high difficulty value for her routine. Our routines were some of the hardest. When you go for a competition, it’s about how strong you are.” After seeing her win medals, weather media storms and face criticism with dignity, it’s clear that strength isn’t just something she saves for competitions.

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