Quah Zheng Wen was in the middle vehicle of an eight-car pileup on his way to this shoot, a front-to-bumper collision. He is unscathed. But if he is rattled, you’d never know. He arrives, apologetic, folding his near-1.8m frame into the stylist’s chair. It’s easy to picture him in a flow state under more intense pressures, like say, at the Olympic Games.
Now, as he turns 27, Quah is treading another, existential “middle”: a sea of choices about life after the extreme regimen of a competitive swimmer. After all, in his world, champions are labelled past prime