Tsen is a champion who became popular nationwide after becoming the only cyclist to win a gold medal for Malaysia during the 1995 SEA Games in Thailand. He also went on to win a silver in Jakarta.
He has since pedalled thousands of kilometres and made Malaysia proud with a long list of victories.
Yet, you could call him the forgotten hero. There is little record of his glittering career. Even the SEA games statistics have left out his exploits in 1995 and 1997.
In 2003 though, Tsen pressed the brakes on his career after 18 long years of competing in the racing world.
In 2016, he decided to stage a comeback. Amazingly, despite having left the cycling world for 13 years, it’s as if the champion never left.
Tsen’s return to the competitive world of racing shook the cycling community in Malaysia, and commanded respect as the former national cyclist began winning races internationally and nationally.
In 2019, he competed in a UCI 2.2 race Tour de Selangor and finished 33rd out of 120 professional riders in the general classification, an amazing feat for any Malaysian, what more a 50-year-old.
At 52, Tsen is not only pushing his limits as he races against elite cyclists in their twenties and in their prime but also fighting the voice in his head that tells him to stop and give in to the pain.
“I want to prove to others that at my age, I am still able to compete against the younger generation,” he said, adding that although national riders from his time have since retired, he’s still in it to win.
Tsen started pedalling on a tricycle when he was around five or six, but his love for cycling truly blossomed during his secondary school years.
“My dad bought me my first ever bike just a month before he died,” recalled Tsen.
“Sadly, that last memory I had with my father got stolen.”
However, things turned around after his Form 3 exams, when his mother bought him his first RM500 beginner’s racing bike.
“I loved checking out new components at the bike shop, and one day the owner of the shop asked me to join his cycling group called Freewheelers.”
This man was none other than Malaysia’s Asian Games gold medallist and national cycling coach Ng Joo Ngan.
“I was in Form 5 at the time when I joined my first 100km road race and ended up in third place in the junior category.
“I was then selected to join the Wilayah Kuala Lumpur Cycling Club, where I got to train on the weekends with the nation’s fastest, all coached by Ng.”
While most of Tsen’s schoolmates spent their holidays relaxing, Tsen toughed it out in Kem Bakat. These were week-long camps held to find the best junior cyclists from each state.
Tsen proved his worth and was then given the opportunity to take part in his first international race at the 1991 Tour de Indonesia.
From there, Tsen went into top gear as he gloriously carried Malaysia’s name from 1990 till 2003 and competed in races like Tour de Indonesia, Tour de Langkawi, Tour de Taiwan, the SEA Games in Thailand and Indonesia, and more.
But after winning golds and cycling with the fastest in Asia, the life of a cyclist took a toll on Tsen.
Competitive days got repetitive and the cyclist found himself pedalling but going nowhere.
“It was like standing in front of a straight high wall that you couldn’t climb over or go beyond,” he said. And I hit that wall at 34.”
Tsen knew what races were going to take place every year and they were always the same ones.
“There was no encouragement to go any further at the time. And so I just decided to walk out of my career as a Southeast Asian rider.”
But, the fire to race sparked again when his eldest son, Ren Bao, took an interest in cycling when he was 12.
“He has been racing in Australia and just last month he raced in the Australia National Championship and was placed 12th in the Junior Category,” said a proud Tsen.
Throwing himself back into the racing world at age 45, Tsen surprised everyone with his comeback.
“I started winning a lot of races in the master category and when I raced in the Tour de Selangor in 2019, I came in at 17th overall.
“I was also one of the oldest racers in that race.”
“A leisure rider may only be cycling for 160km on the weekends, but for racers, we cycle around 100km every day and that’s a total of 600km to 900km every week.”
Exerting all that pressure on one’s legs is “torturous” Tsen said, but it’s a sacrifice he makes to keep up with the racing world.
Dedication and discipline aside, Tsen said that one has to be “very strong mentally as you have to fight through and withstand the physical torture” to stay at a competitive level.
As someone who raced back to the competitive world after more than a decade in retirement, Tsen is living proof that it is never too late to rekindle an old spark.
“I always want to be a champion no matter my age,” said Tsen.