ABDUL HADI Farah Ann

General
RETIREMENT THOUGHTS
She has thought of retirement several times after sustaining multiple injuries. "There were multiple times I felt like throwing in the towel and said maybe this is not for me, especially when I got injured. Then when you come back, you are way below everyone else, training is very hard and I didn't really see the point of carrying on because I wasn't competing well and kept losing, it was very frustrating because I was working very hard. My family always said that I do it because I love it, so that mindset always helped me because I never felt like I need to train because of my parents, or anything else, it was only because I wanted to." (malaymail.com, 19 Nov 2019; sea.mashable.com, 07 Oct 2019)

CYBER-BULLYING
She has had problems with cyber-bullies during her career especially around the 2015 South East Asian Games in Singapore, a Games where she won six medals including two golds. "I think that the important lesson that I found during that time was that I'm very lucky to have such strong backing from my family and friends and teammates. I realised that all the people that mattered to me, my family, my friends, they supported me. And those are the words and advice that I took from this experience. And that's how I realised that, you know, yes, people can say mean things online, they usually never say them in front of your face. And the people who matter will always support you no matter what. I remember my coach saying that if you want to succeed, there will always be people who want to bring you down or will try to make you not succeed." (SportsDeskOnline, 09 Apr 2021; tokyo2020.org, 06 Apr 2021)