Papua should be proud because one of its athletes has the opportunity to compete in the biggest sporting event, the 2024 Olympics which will be held in Paris, France. The name of the athlete who made Papua and Indonesia proud is Rezza Octavia. Rezza’s struggle to get the opportunity to compete in the Olympics certainly went through a long and steep road. He trained many times and also participated in various competitions to gain experience and flying hours. As a professional athlete, Rezza also maintains his health so that he can stay fit to train and compete.
Rezza’s desire to win a medal at the Olympics is one of his biggest motivations during his career as an archery athlete. Rezza’s talent has been noticed by his parents since she was a kid. Rezza was registered at an archery training center and got a lot of information and relationships to slowly become an athlete. When the National Sports Week was held in Papua, Rezza had the opportunity to compete to represent Papua against athletes from various other provinces. The National Sports Week was the first national-scale competition that Rezza participated in and she won a silver medal. After the National Sports Week was over, Rezza was recruited to enter the National Training in preparation for the SEA Games to be held in Vietnam in 2021.
Rezza’s struggle to achieve his dream and ambition to become a professional archer began in the National Training. Rezza was trained by professional coaches and also several former Indonesian archery athletes. After going through various training portions, Rezza was sent to Vietnam as Indonesia’s representative in the 2021 SEA Games. The quite tough training that she went through so far produced positive results in the form of a gold medal which also helped Indonesia to become the overall champion in the event participated by countries in Southeast Asia.
Rezza trained even harder and started participating in competitions at the international level. Rezza’s target was to successfully get a lot of points so that he would be enough to compete in the 2024 Olympics. Rezza’s training portion was getting harder. In fact, in one of the media interviews, Rezza said that every day he practiced to release 1000 arrows. This tough struggle managed to get him a ticket to the Olympics. Rezza officially became Indonesia’s representative at the Olympics after successfully placing 9th in the Archery World Cup held in Turkey.
The impressive achievement with the medals she won and placing in the top 10 at the World Cup apparently did not satisfy Rezza. His participation in the Olympics was a dream come true after going through hard training. Rezza became one of the athletes from Indonesia who competed for the first time in the Olympics as a debutant. The hope is of course that Rezza will succeed in getting a medal or at least the experience of competing in the highest event as a professional athlete.