A mother’s journey of love and loss: Raising Singapore Olympian fencer Amita Berthier

SINGAPORE: In the backseat of the car lay two girls, wrapped up, fast asleep and none the wiser as their parents navigated foggy roads from Edinburgh to Glasgow in early morning darkness.

Hours later, sisters Amita and Aarya Berthier went on to win their first international fencing competition.

And what a Scottish coach said to the girls after has stuck with their mother Uma till today. “You’ve got something special going on there.”

Amita is now, at the age of 23, a three-time SEA Games champion who's qualified for the Olympics twice. But she actually started in gymnastics before giving football a shot.

“She was a midfielder so she would run from one end of the (field) to the other, there was no stopping her,” Uma told CNA.

“You could give her a table tennis bat, badminton racquet, whatever. Her greatest joy then and still now would be sports.”

Uma herself had been a middle-distance track and field runner, while Amita's father Eric was an avid skateboarder and also did judo.

While firm believers in the value of sport, Eric and Uma were not particular about their daughters' pursuits.

“We both were of the mindset that our kids would take up one sport … (But) it was not about going out there being champion," said Uma.

Ultimately what was important for the Berthiers was that their children enjoyed themselves.

“If you really enjoy it, then give it all you’ve got. If you come to a point where you feel this is not it for me, I'm not enjoying it anymore, we always gave them the option of backing out or maybe exploring something else,” Uma said.

“We always felt it had to be owned by the child. And the child has to be passionate about it. It's not about us pushing them because if it comes to pushing them along, then