THEY were crowned the Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year at the Team National University of Singapore (NUS) Sports Awards last year.

Mok Ying Ren, 20, and Dinah Chan, 22, are triathletes who spend a lot of their time training together.

Thus the speculation that the pair are an item. But when asked, the couple denied any romance between them.

'We are just very good friends who train together,' said Chan, a post-graduate student with the National Institute of Education.

'Mok was the one who introduced me to cycling and triathlon. He saw my biathlon results and he encouraged me to get a bicycle to do triathlon.'

So Chan got herself a bicycle last year and started pedalling with Mok and a cycling group in the western part of Singapore.

She enjoyed cycling so much that she decided to pursue it seriously and now aims to qualify for the cycling event in the next SEA Games.

On the other hand, Mok is training more on his running.

As there would not be a triathlon in the next SEA Games, Mok hopes to qualify for the track and field events instead, he said.

Mok was 19 and the youngest triathlete to compete in the SEA Games in 2007 when he won Singapore a gold medal.

His next goal is to conquer the Asian Games which will be held in Guangzhou next year.

For now, the second-year medical student at NUS is doing most of his training by himself.

Every day, Mok wakes up at 6am to do a 10km run before attending classes at 8.30am.

During his lunch break, he would swim 3km.

Focus

Lessons end at about 3pm on most days. By 6pm, Mok would be running again or cycling together with a cycling group, covering about 40km.

And Mok says he'll focus on more overseas competitions this year.

Chan currently trains under Daniel Loy, who is part of the OCBC Singapore Cycling Team to be groomed to challenge for a medal at this year's SEA Games in Laos.

But first, to the Tour of Egat in Thailand in May for Chan, where she will have a better gauge of where she stands among the foreign athletes.

Chan started swimming competitively at 11 and discovered her potential for running when she entered secondary school.

At last year's Mizuno WaveRun, Chan came in second in the Women's Open category, achieving a new personal best time of 41min and 5sec for the 10.3km run. She was also the winner of the Women's Closed category in the Army Half Marathon.

Mok, too, started swimming at a young age of 10 and swam competitively when he entered college.

His inspiration comes from the success of former English athlete, Roger Bannister, who was a medical student too, when he became the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes.

'It is not impossible to perform well even if you are not a professional athlete,' said Mok, who hopes to inspire young Singaporeans to pick up the sport.

'The triathlon is still quite new in Singapore. But we have the logistics to excel in it. It's an area where we can win more medals.'

At the Singapore Sports Awards last year, Mok was awarded the Individual Youth Meritorious Award. He was also one of last year's Singapore Sports Idols .

As the ambassador for Milo Ministry of Education Youth TRYathlon, Mok goes around schools to give speeches and conduct sports clinic.

Excel

He said: 'We should encourage our students to balance both studies and sports.

'We can excel in both. We just have to play less. Instead of spending my free time playing computer games, I go out to run.'

With Mok concentrating more on his running and Chan on cycling, the pair no longer train together as much as they did before.

But Chan said: 'We do meet and cycle together with the cycling group on weekends.'

- JOYCE LIM

This article was first published in The New Paper