SINGAPORE – Lining up at the Changwon International Shooting Range earlier in June, Theresa Goh felt the adrenaline surge, her heart racing and her mind pulling in another direction as she worked to bring it back.

She was competing at the Changwon 2025 World Shooting Para Sport World Cup – her first international outing as a shooter – but the rush was anything but unfamiliar.

These were sensations Goh had grown accustomed to after two decades of competing in the pool.

Born with spina bifida – a condition in which the spine and spinal cord do not form properly – Goh went on to become Singapore’s first Paralympic swimmer at Athens 2004, the country’s first swimming world champion in 2006, a world-record holder and a Paralympic bronze medallist at Rio de Janeiro 2016.

Since retiring from swimming in 2019, Goh’s life has taken on a different rhythm, giving her the time to explore interests like cooking, baking and gaming.

While her return to the competitive arena came after a six-year break, it felt like a space she understood.

The 38-year-old said: “I didn’t really realise how much I enjoyed the competitive aspect of it until I did my shoot. The adrenaline was there but then also I couldn’t let it overrun because then my hand would shake. It’s about how do I balance that.

“There’s the heart racing and realising my brain is thinking one way and how do I bring it back, all the different things I never really had to place in a sporting context in such a long time.”

At her debut, she finished 20th out of 24 with a score of 523 in the women’s 10m air pistol SH1 event, clearing the qualifying mark for the Asean Para Games in Thailand in January 2026.

She has enjoyed the journey so far, being part of a team again and settling into a structured routine.

Though some aspects feel reminiscent of her past, Goh is mindful that this is still new territory, one she did not expect to revisit after hanging up her goggles.

Goh, a pathway and performance manager at the Singapore Disability Sports Council, said: “It was really nice to be retired after swimming... I really enjoyed the freedom and just not having to think about schedules so much or blocking out a certain period of my week for something.

“But at some point, early to mid-last year, I was starting to feel a bit lost, listless in certain aspects of my life.”

She then came across a local modern pent...