Nick Butler
Nick Butler Malaysian water skier Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah has just competed at a third Asian Beach Games on the Thai holiday island of Phuket.

After narrowly missing out on the medals at Muscat 2010 and Haiyang 2012, she won a superb silver this time around, illustrating the solid progression you would expect from someone who has competed in the upper echelons of the sport for a few years.

She also celebrated her 11th birthday in July, and was joined in the Malaysian team by younger brothers aged nine and seven.

One of my favourite things about journalism is the fact that occasionally, and particularly when you attend relatively lesser known events like the Asian Beach Games, you stumble across a story which is almost too good to be true. For their sheer youth alone, this is one of those occasions.

I had heard tales about the pre-teenage water skiing prodigies during the Games, but had not had a chance to visit the Bangneow Dam Reservoir where action took place, only to find myself in an airport security queue with the entire family when leaving Phuket this morning.

Interviewing an 11-year-old was a new challenge for me, but I needn't have worried. Despite weighing just 32 kilograms and being tiny, even for her age, Aaliyah came across as articulate, comfortable talking to a journalist, and impressively fluent in English, as well as Malay, benefiting no doubt from attending an international school in her home city of Kuala Lumpur.

"I first skied when I was five," she told insidethegames. "Then I entered my first competition when I was six and competed in the Asian Beach Games the year after that. Competing against older people there was not a challenge because I knew them all anyway. It's been a fun journey and I am improving all the time."

Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah (left) competing at her first Asian Beach Games at the age of seven at Muscat 2010, where she was narrowly beaten by elder sister, Phillipa (centre) ©Chandan St Clare via OCAAaliyah Yoong Hanifah (left) competing at her first Asian Beach Games at the age of seven at Muscat 2010, where she was narrowly beaten by elder sister, Phillipa (centre)
©Chandan St Clare via OCA




Competing in the tricks event, which favours lighter athletes but still requires plenty of strength and power, she came fifth in Muscat, behind a Chinese cleansweep and her 32-year-old half-sister, Philippa. Aged seven years and four months, Aaliyah also became the youngest competitor in any Asian multi-sports competition.

A year later at the South East Asian (SEA) Games in Palembang, Indonesia, she won gold, the youngest champion in the history of the Games since its inception in 1959.

After again narrowly missing out in Haiyang in 2012, Aaliyah managed a mammoth 5,730 points to lead the way in qualifying in Phuket. Had she managed to repeat this score in the final she would have won gold. But after failing to land a reverse back-flip, the final one of nine tricks she performed inside 20 seconds, she had to be content with silver as Chinese rival Jiang Hui defended her 2012 title with a score of 5,660.

It was still a great performance and she is also now ranked 38th in the senior world rankings and eighth in the junior (under 17) stakes. Remarkably, she is also no longer the youngest Asian multi-sports participant as brother Adam competed in the men's tricks event aged seven years and one month.

Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah competing in Phuket in the slalom competition, which she participated in alongside her favoured tricks event ©Getty ImagesAaliyah Yoong Hanifah competing in Phuket in the slalom competition, which she participated in alongside her favoured tricks event ©Getty Images



When the family pedigree is considered, this success is slightly less surprising. Both parents, as well as sister Philippa, are high-level water skiers and father Hanifah is also a ski operator and the head coach of the Malaysian Waterski and Wakeboard Federation.

Most interestingly of all, half-brother Alex Yoong was Malaysia's first ever Formula One driver, competing for Minardi in the 2001 and 2002 seasons and remaining the country's best known motor sports ambassador. Speed and the thrill of danger certainly runs through the family's veins.

Yet while many child prodigies are associated with dogmatic and unyielding parents who are determined for their offspring to succeed no matter what - think the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods, for example - here the case is different.

"Aaliyah was constantly pressing us to have a go, but at first she was simply too small," her father Hanifah explained. "She would be sitting on the corner of the dock with a life jacket on watching everyone else. We never made her compete but when she was five we modified a ski that she could use.

"Now we have to push her to rest. We want her to train only six times a week but she often tries to on the seventh as well."

Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah's half brother is Malaysian motor racing champion and former Formula One driver, Alex Yoong ©Getty ImagesAaliyah Yoong Hanifah's half brother is Malaysian motor racing champion and former Formula One driver, Alex Yoong ©Getty Images






The aim now is to become a senior world champion, something which she is certainly on track for but will still not be easy. "When you start a sport, let's say you have a one per cent chance of becoming world champion," Hanifah added. "Now I would say her chance is about 49 per cent. There are still a lot of things that could go wrong as she gets older."

French star Clementine Lucine and 18-year-old tricks world record holder from the United States, Erika Lang, are two established rivals she would have to overcome. But, with the Malaysian being advised by top international coaches, there are many potential improvements to be made.

For instance, Aaliyah will soon start a strength and conditioning programme to improve her core stability - something she has previously been deemed too young to do - at the same training facility used by Malaysian squash legend and world number one, Nicol David.

And what about the Olympic Games, I ask? Is that ever a possibility? "It seems unlikely," I am told. "But with Olympic Agenda 2020 currently going on and new sports being considered, you never know. There is some talk about cable wakeboarding events coming in, and, if that happens, Aaliyah would probably switch events."

For now though, she has enough challenges to be getting on with, with the World Junior Championships coming up in Lima, Peru, in January before the Southeast Asian Games in Singapore in June, where, because water-skiing was not on the 2013 sports programme, she will be an 11-year-old defending champion. If she can pull off more backflips like this one, she will be hard to beat...



It has not been a good few weeks for Malaysian sport, with the failed doping test by Asian Games wushu gold medallist Tai Cheau Xuen being followed by an alleged failure by badminton world number one, Lee Chong Wei. But the Southeast Asian nation could have unearthed their next sporting superstar, the next Nicol David even, and the 11-year-old is already well on the way.

But with typical maturity, Aaliyah is not laying all her eggs in the basket of competitive water skiing. "I want to be a world-class coach, a world champion... and a vet," she tells me. "I love animals."

Nick Butler is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.