After SEA Games golds, Indonesia's Rifda Irfanaluthfi dreams of Paris 2024
The 22-year-old would be the first Indonesian to qualify for an Olympics in gymnastics. She shared her aims at the South East Asian (SEA) Games.
Artistic Gymnastics
Buoyed by all-around and floor exercise gold medals at this week's Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Hanoi, Indonesian gymnast Rifda Irfanaluthfi has big dreams still to come.
"I hope to qualify to the Olympics because I would be the first for Indonesia," she told Olympics.com on Monday (16 May), after the conclusion of the artistic gymnastics competition in Vietnam. "At the Olympics, I want to show the world that Indonesian gymnasts are there."
Irfanaluthfi's chance at qualifying to Paris 2024 will take place at next year’s World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp, Belgium.
The 22-year-old, who says her mum and coach are her biggest inspirations, has made marked improvement since her last trip to the worlds in 2019, where she finished 142nd in the all-around standings, well short of a qualification to Tokyo 2020 which took place in 2021.
At those worlds in Stuttgart, she scored a 44.832 in the all-around. Her 49.650 total at the SEA Games, which came under a new, stricter gymnastics code of points that went into effect 1 January 2022, resulted in an unprecedented result: all-around victory.
“I got the medal I’ve never won before for the all-around and floor exercise,” she said of her results in Vietnam.
Irfanaluthfi takes three medals away from these SEA Games in total, adding vault bronze to her two gold medals.
Now, with goals of success at the Asian and Olympic Games, the work for most history continues.