SEAGames: Grandmother, 76, wins two silver medals

JAKARTA—A 76-year-old grandmother has bagged two silver medals at the Southeast Asian Games — the oldest person to make the podium at this year’s competition.

Singapore’s Lai Chun Ng, who is older than the Games she is taking part in, was a member of the contract bridge team that finished second on Tuesday in Palembang, the South Sumatran city co-hosting the competition.

The retired teacher also struck silver in the women’s butler pairs on Monday, but fell agonisingly short of securing the cash bonus offered by Singapore’s athletics bosses to gold medal winners.

“Look at the other athletes, they are all young ones,” she was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Globe.

“I’m very thrilled at my age that I can still do something and win medals for the country,” she added.

Ng, who jogs 45 minutes every day to stay fit, defended the inclusion of the discipline on the list of events for the first time.

“Bridge is easy to learn, but difficult to master,” she said, adding that she hopes to take part in the Games when they are held on home soil in Singapore in 2015.

Ng was born in 1935, more than two decades before the first SEA Games were held.

She is not however the oldest competitor at this year’s games, with Malaysia’s men’s bridge team fielding a 79-year-old.