The next month will be a memorable one for Apsara Sakbun.
The Terre Haute South and Ball State University graduate left Sunday for Cambodia. She will train with its national swim team there before going from there to Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games, where she will represent Cambodia in the 50-meter freestyle.
“Every child who swims grows up dreaming of going to the Olympic Games,” said Sakbun in a press release. “I am beyond honored to have the opportunity to represent Cambodia at the highest level.”
Sakbun’s father Vannara, a doctor in Terre Haute for many years, is an immigrant from Cambodia which gives her eligibility. And while swimming at Ball State, she met another Cambodian-American, DePauw swimmer Mei-Li Minnich, who gave her the idea.
Minnich was supposed to swim for Cambodia in the 2020 Olympics at Tokyo, but because of COVID-19 difficulties she was unable to compete in international competitions to make her eligible.
Cambodia sends swimmers as wild-card participants, because swimmers from that country don’t go through a qualification stage, and because of that wild-card status it is allowed just one male and one female swimmer, and limited to competition in the 50-meter sprints.
Sakbun got her international competition last year at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, where she set Cambodian records in the 50 as well as the 100-meter freestyle and the 100-meter backstroke.
(With a little prodding from the Tribune-Star, she said she can still walk down the streets of Phnom Penh without being recognized, but that the Cambodian athletes know her.)
She’ll compete for the first time in preliminary swims at 11 a.m. Aug. 3 — that’s 5 a.m. for Mayor Brandon Sakbun, who won’t be able to join his sister in France — with semifinals later that day and the finals on Aug. 4.
Indiana State’s Chloe Farro, who will represent Aruba, is in the same event. She and Sakbun met at an ISU-Ball State meet but didn’t compete in the same events, Sakbun recalled.
While the mayor and her younger sister Haley won’t be with her in Paris, Sakbun noted that her father and mother, Carlene, and brother V.J. will be there to support her, and so will her boyfriend.
She’s been training in Charlotte, N.C., where she is a financial analyst for Wells Fargo. “I am grateful for Wells Fargo and their unwavering support through this entire process,” she said in her press release.
Right now “I’m on cloud nine,” she told the Tribune-Star, “but when I get to the [Olympic] Village [tentatively Monday] I’ll be more nervous.”
She is quietly confident about her upcoming performance.
“I think I’ll go faster tan my seeding time,” Sakbun said. “A personal best is all I can hope for.”
Persons interested in supporting her, by the way, can visit www.bonfire.com/apsara-sakbun-olympic-swag/.
