SINGAPORE — Singapore’s national record holder for the half-marathon and the marathon races may return with the national track and field team after a five-year absence. Still, Soh Rui Yong won’t represent the nation in those events at the 2023 SEA Games. Although each country is allowed to send two representatives per event, Singapore Athletics has decided not to send any Team Singapore athletes for the marathon event.
Soh posted on social media that selection criteria have been set by both the Singapore National Olympic Council and Singapore Athletics for an objective selection process. With regards to the marathon event, the qualification standard is the bronze medal mark set by Tony Payne (Thailand) in the previous SEA Games, which is 2:26:40. Although Soh had run in the Valencia marathon in Dec 2021 and clocked a time of 2:22:59, the qualifying window only opened in May 2022. Thus, Soh’s timing was not taken into consideration.
“I did not run another marathon in the qualifying window as I focused more on the shorter distances in 2022, to improve my speed, endurance and efficiency. That’s where I qualified for the 5000m and 10000m events running 14:59 and a new national record of 31:12. I also suffered from a bad back and hip from July 2022 to Jan 2023 which prevented me from doing another Valencia Marathon in December 2022,” said Soh on his Facebook page.
Soh is a back-to-back winner of the SEA Games marathon, taking top honours in 2015 and 2017. His first marathon win was when Singapore hosted the SEA Games, with a time of 2:34:56, ahead of Thailand’s Boonthung Srisung and Vietnam’s Hoang Nguyen Thanh, who came in second and third place, respectively. Two years later, the darling of Singapore’s marathon reclaimed his gold medal at Putrajaya, Malaysia, as he clocked a time of 2:29:27.
“I could probably have made a compelling case to be selected based on my 100% win rate at SEA Games Marathons I’ve taken part in and the fact that my last marathon was the Singapore national record. However, this would have required selectors to make a special case for me,” added Soh, slated to run in the men’s 5000m and 10,000m in the Cambodia SEA Games.
Soh revealed that he had discussed with Singapore Athletics, and he feels that in the name of ‘sportsmanship and objectivity,’ he declined to make an appeal to be considered for the marathon so as to be fair to other runners who had tried and failed to qualify. But Soh, a current Law degree student in the UK, hopes that he will still be able to qualify for the event at future SEA Games.
“Eventually we’re sending a total of zero male marathoners for these games, but I hope our standards will improve in the years to come, and I’ll be gunning for a comeback in the marathon at the 2025 SEA Games in Bangkok!”
In the previous SEA Games in Vietnam, Team Singapore had their best-ever outing in athletics since 1993, bringing home one gold, three silvers, and seven bronze medals. There were five national records and eight personal best performances recorded. The track and field events in Cambodia will be held from 8 to 12 May at the Morodok Techo Stadium, while the marathon and 20km walk events are scheduled two days earlier in Siem Reap, Angkor Wat.
