BERTHIER Amita

General
MOVE TO THE USA
In January 2017 she relocated to the United States of America to join her long-time coach, Ralf Bissdorf, who had left Singapore to work at the Marx Fencing Academy in Concord, Massachusetts. In September 2018 she began studying at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. "In the beginning, it was very hard. Coming to the US at such a young age and having to live alone [and] then living with a host family, it was like a bit of a change. It was not easy juggling the academic rigour, training and competing. I had to be steely-minded and single-minded about my goal." (tamilmurasu, 09 Jul 2021; channelnewsasia, 13 Jun 2021; 1 Play Sports Facebook page, 19 Apr 2020; straitstimes, 13 Jan 2018, 03 Sep 2017; todayonline, 04 Apr 2017)

OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE
At the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, she became the first female foil fencer to represent Singapore at the Olympic Games. She lost in the table of 32 to Lee Kiefer, who has also fenced for the University of Notre Dame. Both athletes have also trained under coach Amgad Khazbak. "It was a tricky bout because Lee and I are teammates back in the US [speaking in 2021], so we know each other very well. You know, I'm fencing with the best in the world, and I'm one of the youngest competitors in this event [the 2020 Olympic Games], so I should just move forward. I really look up to Lee and hopefully I'll reach her level." (straitstimes, 25 Jul 2021; channelnewsasia, 25 Jul 2021)

FAMILY TRAITS
Her late father Eric was a judoka and her mother Uma was a runner. "I'm pretty competitive when it comes to a lot of things. I think it's because both my parents were also sportspeople, so this kind of also runs in my genes. [My father] loved sports. We would always watch the Olympics together, every single sport. We'd sit there and watch it together. That's also where my huge love of sports came from, because my dad was such an avid supporter of all sorts of sports. I wrote a little note to him before he got cremated. One of my promises to him was that I would qualify for the Olympics." (tamilmurasu, 09 Jul 2021; sg, 14 Jun 2021; channelnewsasia, 13 Jun 2021)

GIVING BACK
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she spent time voluntarily coaching 17 young fencers over the internet after a fan from the Philippines contacted her and told her that her fencing club had been closed. "Fencing is such a niche, expensive sport, but you shouldn't be taking away the opportunity to become a super successful athlete just because you don't have the resources for it. My biggest motivation is probably to help the least privileged kids. Whenever I can give back, I like to give back." (si, 06 Jan 2023)

She became the first female foil fencer to represent Singapore at the Olympic Games when she competed at the 2020 Games in Tokyo. (SportsDeskOnline, 22 Mar 2022)

In 2021 she became the first Singaporean to win the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA] team championship in fencing. (straitstimes, 05 Apr 2021)

She became the first Singaporean foil fencer to win a Junior World Cup event by securing victory in 2017 in Havana, Cuba. (straitstimes, 17 Dec 2017)