Vietnam SEA Games 2022 has been a good one for Singapore. As of now, Saturday afternoon May 21, our gold medal tally is 47, making us fourth – after Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, countries with huge populations. Quite an achievement. Maybe it’s time to have a national or Parliamentary debate on what our goals really are when it comes to sports. Be pragmatic or passionate? It may be as simple as that.
It is a huge subject for which we may need a White Paper if we are serious about being serious. Are we? Include in that debate Joseph Schooling’s call for a national dialogue on sports and national service, highlighting the need to manage the expectations of athletes who are undergoing NS.
Meanwhile, Shanti Pereira’s 200m sprint gold last week reminded me of what Glory Barnabas, the last Singapore woman to win a 200m SEA Games gold in 1973 (49 years ago!), said about pushing the boundaries or being irritated or spurred by national leaders who unfortunately have no real love for sporting glory because they have never been sportsmen themselves.
This is what Barnabas said, referring to Lee Kuan Yew’s remarks when he opened the (old) National Stadium shortly before the SEA (then SEAP) Games: “Lee said they were not interested in Olympic medals. They built the stadium so that more people would take sport as a lifelong pursuit. We, the athletes, were so angry. We were going for medals. The girls were all worked up: We must show him!” She won the 200m gold in a photo finish with Than Than from Myanmar.
Then there was a remark once made (I think by Goh Chok Tong) about the government’s ultimate preference for practical, meaning useful, talents, which went roughly like this: “I’d rather have a good artillery gunner than a concert pianist”.
We may have gone past that obsession with utilitarianism. Schooling had a standing ovation in Parliament for his 100m butterfly gold at the Rio Olympics in 2016. To be able to say we have an Olympic gold medallist among us is important for national pride and does wonders to show that this city is more than just a trading station, a collection of artificial concoctions like the White Elephant Gardens By The Bay or a shameful rich man’s playground for F1 races which disrupt downtown life at the expense of helpless, no-say and alienated ordinary Singaporeans.
We should aim to be more than a servicing centre for foreigners or a country where its citizens are satisfied or made to be satisfied with playing second fiddle to others.
I get back to Schooling’s national dialogue plea. When asked how he has been juggling NS and swimming, The Straits Times reported him as saying:
“As a swimmer, it’s pretty challenging to be stuck in the middle of what the nation expects you to be… versus the things that you can commit to in terms of training requirements, or the time needed to do the things that you need to do.”
“I think it’s about time we had a national dialogue, we all sat down together and discussed, what are the expectations that our athletes are facing as they’re serving national service?”
Stressing that NS “is something that everyone needs to do”, he said: “At the end of the day, I’m gonna step up there and do my best no matter if I’m in the shape I am or not. But as the people watching on TV, they have a lot of expectations… we as athletes we want to match those expectations.”
“So it’s all about how we can both grow together and how sporting achievements can coincide.”
Put simply, Singaporeans have to grow up now and decide. We cannot have our cake and eat it. The national dialogue on sports should be about NS – and more. If we believe world-standard sporting accomplishment is integral to our national identity and existence, decide on what is world standard and exempt our sportsmen from NS. Make everything transparent. Few male Singaporeans would begrudge such a policy. There is precedent. South Korea exempts its top sportsmen from conscription.
It’s all about recognizing and rewarding what is essentially also national service, making personal sacrifices to bring sporting glory to the country.
Let’s have that national dialogue.
Tan Bah Bah, consulting editor of TheIndependent.Sg, is a former senior leader writer with The Straits Times. He was also managing editor of a magazine publishing company.