Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 2, 2025: Malaysia’s waterski star Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah made history by winning three gold medals in the 2025 IWWF University World Championships held in Auckland, New Zealand over the weekend.
This is also the first time that an Asian waterski athlete has won a gold medal in a world championship, according to a social media post by the International Waterski & Wakeboard Federation (IWWF).
Aaliyah, 21, won gold in women’s jump with a distance of 44.7 metres to beat the favourite, Lili Steiner of Austria. Steiner scored 43.5m while New Zealand’s Lily Meade was third with 41.5m.
"That first gold in jump felt awesome," said Aaliyah, who first came to prominence when representing Malaysia in the OCA’s 2nd Asian Beach Games in Muscat, Oman in 2010 at the age of seven.
"I have wanted a world championship win for 13 years since I won the 2011 SEA Games gold in women’s tricks at eight," she added.
Aaliyah won her second gold in women’s tricks with an outstanding score of 7970 points. This time she had to beat another favourite, Hannah Stopnicki (Canada), who had finished ahead of her in preliminaries and was top seed in the finals. Stopnicki scored 5760 points. Layne Moroney of Australia was third with 5050 points.
Aaliyah finished sixth in the slalom final with a score of 2.00/55kph/12.00m despite this not being her favourite event.
As a result of the two wins in jump and tricks and her sixth-place finish in slalom, Aaliyah claimed her third gold medal in the overall discipline with a score of 2863.64 points. Lili Steiner bagged silver and Lily Meade took bronze.
The Malaysian Waterski & Wakeboard Federation Hon. Secretary, Hanifah Yoong, said the results were unexpected as the MWWF had been targeting gold in overall and silver in jump and tricks.
“These results took away a huge amount of pressure she had been putting on herself in the past year and a half since winning third in jump at the U21 World Championship in Mexico in 2023,” said Hanifah, who is also Aaliyah’s father.
