Why certain local sports and national development are like oil and water
SINGAPORE - Quah Ting Wen’s record-breaking swim at the National Age Group Swimming Championships gave our local sports fans plenty of reasons reasons to cheer. Ditto for Wan Lay Chi’s setting his personal best of 47.74 m in winning the discus event at the 3rd All-Comers Athletics Meet. Singaporeans have every reason to be proud of the exploits of our aforementioned two native born sportsmen and sportswomen.
Logically, sports should come hand in hand with a country’s national development. It is some sort of unspoken universal language that bypasses language, racial, political and social barriers. The enduring image of the Iranian soccer team exchanging momentos with the United States soccer team and posing together for a group photo before their match during World Cup’98 epitomizes this universal language that is sport, bearing in mind the differences between the two countries.
The Grand Old Lady, our National Stadium, was the setting of such scenes of unity. Filled to the brim on most occassions when our national soccer team from the Fandi-Malek-David era and before were playing, spectators from all walks celebrated together when the outcome of the game was in Singapore’s favor. At the same time, they mourned together when our national team suffered a heartbreaking loss.
Thus, the question to ask is what is the impact of this scheme on our national development? Sadly, the verdict is that while the sporting successes is floating high like oil at the top, our national development is relegated to the bottom like water underneath the oil.”
Fast forward to the recent years, certain sports saw the implementation of the Foreign Sports Talent Scheme in a bid to produce instantaneous results at the highest level. A foreign prospect deemed to have good medal winning chances at the international level would be automatically fast-tracked to gain Singapore citizenship. Obviously, the desire for instant sporting success was the raison d’etre of the scheme. And this has culminated in a certain extent of tangible success in prestigious competitions, most notably a silver medal showing by the table tennis team.
Thus, the question to ask is what is the impact of this scheme on our national development? Sadly, the verdict is that while the sporting successes is floating high like oil at the top, our national development is relegated to the bottom like water underneath the oil.
First and foremost, the Foreign Sports Talent Scheme is promoting the philosophy that “there is always a shortcut to success”. And shortcut is the right word. Seems like a quick fix for instant sporting success, isn’t it? I remembered my soccer coach cum mentor always drumming this fact into my head:”Talent allows you to pick up essential elements quickly. If you find that you lack talent in any area, spend more time working extra hard in that area”. What I was taught by my coach was basically the meaning of sports - work hard and better myself. In our sports authorities’ insatiable thirst for success, rather than rely on our local sportsmen, they basically chose the shortcut - importing qualified foreign guns. What happens was that they basically invested in the scouting and subsequent development of these foreign talents. The cynical ones would call that “buying your way to success”. Whatever we want to call it, one thing for sure is that this scheme promotes an unhealthy “there is a shortcut to success” ethos which is detrimental to our national mindset. This ironically defeats the purpose of sports, which is to train hard and reach new heights at every competition.
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