Archer Tabitha Yeo during the women's individual ranking round at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games on 6 Nov. Photo: OIS/ Will Palmer
Tabitha Yeo decided at age six that she wanted to be a world champion archer. Part of this decision was influenced by the animated film ‘Brave’, in which the heroine Merida relies on her bow and arrow to save her kingdom.
It is a goal that has led the 17-year-old to SEA Games gold on her debut in 2025, and now to the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games.
“After I watched the movie, I thought she was kind of cool, so I was like, “I want to pursue archery,’ And at six, I decided I was going to be a world champion,” said the Singaporean, who scored 668 points out of a possible 720 to rank seventh out of 32 athletes in the women’s individual ranking round on 6 Nov.
“And since then, it’s just been the grind every training, six days a week, to get to this point.”
Staying motivated can be a challenge even seasoned champions occasionally struggle with, let alone a young athlete whose competitive sporting career was just starting.
To provide added motivation, her father – former national dragon boater Yeo Chee Wee – made her a pact: To see who between them would be the first to represent Singapore in archery at the SEA Games.
The pact started during the 2015 SEA Games in Singapore, when both were watching the archery event. Young Tabitha had thought the archers were “so cool”, and her father saw an opportunity to further fuel her drive.
“Our pact was actually to motivate me to go to training more,” explained Tabitha. “My dad comes to train with me to support me and motivate me to keep training hard, and to keep working towards the end goal.”
The elder Yeo, who was in the stands at the Abdoulaye Wade Stadium, said: “As a former national athlete myself, I knew that it’s never easy to a young athlete to always have the desire to train and compete especially when the results sometimes don’t go your way.
“I just tried to be a training partner in her early days, though I needed more handicaps very soon after.”
Recalling those initial days, he noted that Tabitha had tried multiple sports as a child and chose archery on her own.
“What started as a weekly session soon turned serious when she started talking about being a world champion one day. It wasn’t a passing remark, since she kept at it for almost a year before we put her on a more formal training programme,” said the 52-year-old.
“We had to encourage her to complete her training programmes initially as with all children. Over time, she’s developed her own discipline towards her training and takes ownership of the outcome.”
Dakar 2026 is just Tabitha’s second youth competition in her career, after the Asian Youth Archery Championships in 2024. At the senior level, she has featured in numerous stops on the Asia Cup and World Cup circuits, winning two medals in the mixed team event over the last two years. On her SEA Games debut last year, she teamed up with Li Yue Long to win a historic gold in the mixed recurve, which she described as “a very big milestone”.
Tabitha returns to the competition arena on 7 Nov for the 1/16 elimination round, where she will face Ella Yang of New Zealand. The 60m ranking round, in which archers shoot over a distance of 60m at a 122cm-diameter target, determines the seeding of individual athletes for the elimination round.
She added: “I think today’s performance is not the best, there’s always better. But it was within my expectations and I’ll continue to do my best for the elimination matches.”
The Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games takes place from 31 October to 13 November 2026. For the latest Team Singapore coverage and news, follow Team Singapore on their social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) or visit the official Team Singapore website.