Trisa to officiate at 2024 games
TRISA Cheer, the operations manager for Fiji Swimming, joins Della Shaw, the president of Weightlifting Fiji, as one of two Fijians selected to officiate at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France, later this year.
Trisa, who boasts 12 years of involvement in swimming, expressed her elation at this achievement, describing it as the realisation of a long-held dream and the culmination of years of dedicated effort.
“This has been my goal from the beginning of my journey as a technical official, similar to athletes who aspire to compete in the Olympics one day,” Trisa remarked.
“This is my first Olympic Games although I had officiated at the Youth Olympics in 2018 in Argentina.”
Trisa, who is an experienced open water coach and technical official (TO) and previously, the World Triathlon Continental co-ordinator for Oceania, said the journey as a technical official started when she was teaching swimming in schools and then became a swimming instructor and got involved with clubs and coaching.
“I started being a technical official when I saw that most of my swimmers faced disqualification due to rule violations, so I decided to learn the rules, getting to know more on the technical part so I can teach my swimmers,” she said.
Trisa is no stranger to officiating in competitions as she is an accredited international swimming referee and has travelled the world taking part in regional and international swimming meets.
Born and brought up in Toorak, Suva and having participated in netball, badminton, hockey and powerlifting, Trisa hopes to inspire a generation of technical officials that will face criticisms head on and learn to take a stand on issues they believe in and compromise on some.
Trisa encouraged more volunteers to be technical officials in any sport and to keep forging ahead, “because one day you will get to that level”.
Meanwhile, Weightlifting Fiji president Della Shaw will be officiating at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games as a technical official after missing out on the 2021 Olympic Games because of COVID restrictions.
Della said she received her appointment in September last year, and this was her second appointment. Her first appointment was in Tokyo but because of COVID-19 in her family during time to travel, she had to let that appointment go to take care of her family.
Della says she hopes that nothing will go wrong this year so she can officiate at her first Olympic Games.
She acknowledges the International Weightlifting Federation for believing in her capabilities and appointing her as one of the officials in Paris.
She says there are only two Weightlifting TOs from the Oceania region that will be part of the officials.
This has been my goal from the beginning of my journey as a technical official, similar to athletes who aspire to compete in the Olympics one day
– Trisa Cheer