Just One More Gold, Gischa!

“Keep your spirits up, everyone out there who is like me. Perhaps you can be like me in the future. Above all, keep looking for your own potential, and I hope you receive the same fortune I have.”

Jakarta (ANTARA) — Small things can quietly govern the movements of everything around them. The Sun, for instance.

Or a white ball, about the size of a fist, in the middle of a boccia court, known to players as the jack. The white ball does not move after it is thrown; it simply waits. Twelve other balls—six red and six blue—compete to get close to it, like planets that have yet to find their own orbits.

Gischa Zayana has lived in that little solar system for four years.

On Thursday, 29 October 2026, she left the Merdeka Palace complex after receiving an award from President Prabowo Subianto for athletes who had won medals.

Wearing a light-blue jacket and a cap shading half her face, she looked radiant in her wheelchair as it rolled slowly along. Two gold medals from the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Para Games hung around her neck, clinking softly whenever her wheels crossed gravel on the tarmac of the Presidential Palace complex. The sound was barely audible, except to anyone paying close attention.

She gave a gentle smile when greeted. It was the same smile, even though her face now looked more mature.

Three years earlier in Phnom Penh, she wore round-framed glasses. Behind the lenses, her eyes would close whenever her red ball missed its mark. The glasses are gone now, and her cheekbones look more defined. The 17-year-old girl has become a 21-year-old woman who knows how to sit calmly amid a crowd.

June 2023. The Cambodia ASEAN Para Games, women’s BC2 individual final. Gischa edged past Vietnam’s Nguyen Nhat Uyen, 6-5.

The scoreboard recorded a one-point margin. But it never recorded Gischa’s tears.

That day, she cried like a child who had just been told that her dream could come true. Her first international gold felt like a miracle, because she could do nothing more as her opponent had five chances to win comfortably.

A year later, Gischa was in Paris, on the biggest stage a para-athlete could imagine. She returned with bronze in the individual event and silver in the team event. She was also the first Indonesian athlete to win a boccia medal at the Paralympics. People called it a surprise. Gischa called it a helping hand.

Then came Thailand in January 2026. The ASEAN Para Games again. Two more golds, in the individual and mixed team events.

Then Nagoya. The Asian stage.

There, she faced Hong Kong’s Hiu Lam Yeung, an opponent who had beaten her almost every time. Some opponents beat us because they are stronger. Others beat us because they have lived in our heads for too long. Hiu Lam was the second kind.