HANGZHOU – At practice most weeks, Stephenie Chen will strap a 35kg weight around her waist, reach for the bar and do pull-ups. It’s not her favourite thing but it’s a necessary thing. It points to her strength of body but also of purpose. Always she wants to be better and on Tuesday at the picturesque Fuyang Water Sports Centre, the 31-year-old kayaker demonstrated the very best version of herself.

At the start of the women’s singles K1 500m, her boat flew out of the starting gate like a red arrow. The finish line was the target. By the end, her windmilling arms exhausted, she had won silver, the first of that colour by a Singaporean kayaker and only the second medal overall after Mervyn Toh’s bronze in 2018.

Up in the stands in Hangzhou her parents watched as their child’s hard work found a glittering conclusion. “Overwhelmed,” said her mother Yvonne. “It’s an honour,” said her father Michael, “to have a daughter who trains so hard and puts all her effort and focus into training.” In fact, many of his daughters were kayakers and for 20 years Michael drove a taxi so that he could drop them to their early-morning practice. This was love and now it had found the best reward.

China’s Li Dongyin won the race in 1min 58.931sec and Iran’s Hediye Kazemi took bronze in 2:00.635. But for a sizeable part of the race it was Chen, who finished in 2:00.074, who led. Going out hard was the plan and as her sister, Andrea, a former kayaker, said, “This is the best start we’ve seen her execute at a major Games.”

The start was a tactic and it led to a hilarious answer from a relaxed Chen. “I race the best when I’m in front. And the idea was just to get out there and scare the s*** out of everyone else. I think I did that. And towards the end, it was mainly just not hanging on for dear life, but a little bit.” And then she laughed.

Kayakers don’t look around, their focus is forward, but when Chen later reviewed the race she was astonished. “I did not know that I was that far in front.” Later, she added, “I can’t believe that I challenged China that well. I know my front half is strong. And my back end is where I need to work on.”

Work has been Chen’s anthem all her life. She breathes kayaking, sweats for it, aches for it. Her mother had said, “In life, if you don’t have a passion, you can’t achieve much” and her daughter embodies that idea. As one of Singapore’s young kayakers, Jovi Jayden Kalaichelvan, mentioned, “She is a very serious athlete.”

Chen, whose coach David Smith wore her medal, has laboured like most athletes in anonymity. She has bench-pressed dutifully (she’s doing 90-95kg now), forsaken time with her family and painfully given up what she loves. Like spicy fish soup.

Said Suzanne Seah, her former K2 500m partner, “Whenever we go to a restaurant in Singapore we order one big bowl of spicy fish soup and the two of us can finish it. But she hasn’t eaten spicy food for the last year because every time she eats it she cannot train properly. So she gave up so many things that she loves, just for this.”

Chen, whose will resembles the iron she lifts, said, “I’m used to it, just like grinding and grinding and grinding it out”. But perhaps it took a subtle change in mindset in this area to invigorate her. She was so focused on grinding, a single-minded monk in pursuit of a distant goal, that she forgot to enjoy racing.

The last time she raced was in spring and “from April up till now it was just grind”. And then, she says, during the world championships in August, “I was watching people race and I was like, whoa, they look like they’re having so much fun. I was like, hmmm, maybe it’s time to remember how much I enjoy racing instead of just fighting to die at training”.

Did it help? Yes, she said. All that grinding and muscle and technique and now joy, together released into the waters of Hangzhou. It was enough to surprise a Chinese rower initially and sufficient to put her where she’s wanted to go. The podium, on which she gently wept.

In the three last Asian Games, she was seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth and now, finally and fabulously, second. “I’ve always had a stepping stone mentality,” she said. “Like you said, seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, that’s like literally steps.”

Then, medal in callused hand, Chen walked away to doping control, a woman whose fidelity to her craft has found validation. But knowing her, in a few weeks she’ll be back in the shed at the Sports Hub and reaching for the pull-up bar.

Do you still hate it?

“I still hate it,” she laughed.

But then she’ll grip it, and like she did on Tuesday, she’ll rise higher.