Asia Times: Singapore wants its young to take a sporting chance


	July 11, 2001	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Singapore wants its young to take a sporting chance
By Adaline Lau

SINGAPORE - Singaporeans are probably among the most competitive people in Southeast Asia, but the likes of them channeling their energy into sports rather than in activities that would ensure their economic future used to seem quite far-fetched.

After all, this is a country where young children spend much of their weekends with tutors instead of with playmates just so they have a fighting chance at a slot in a prestigious school, thereby ensuring a good job later.

Yet now the government says sports and money can go hand and hand, and it insists it is not saying that only because it wants Singapore to be among the top 10 sporting nations in Asia by 2010. Indeed, the nation's planners say, sports development would not only help in nation-building - think millions of Singaporeans cheering on the country's representatives during international meets - it can also be a means to pump up the all-important economy.

According to Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, a vibrant sports industry has "potential for growth, in creating jobs and stimulating tourism" in this city-state of 4 million people. Goh and other government officials have yet to spell out exactly how that will happen, but they are already betting that such an argument could goad Singaporeans into taking another look at sports.

Launching a S$500 million (US$275 million) sports development plan last weekend, Goh reiterated that he believed there is much to be gained from sports promotion. It will bring our people together and open new paths of success beyond academic pursuit," he noted.

The plan not only aims to make Singapore into a sports powerhouse in less than a decade but in having a sports industry worth between US$374 million to $769 million by 2010. To help that happen, the country's officials are taking the same serious approach they give to other campaigns in the past. They are also pushing a "sporting culture" and are aiming for having one in two Singaporeans exercising at least once a week by 2005.

Singapore also now has a sports ministry, which was set up just early last year, as well as a Committee on Sporting Singapore (COSS) that is supposed to identify issues that hinder sports development and to recommend initiatives for future development in sports. The COSS has already outlined plans of attaining the sports goals in a 90-page report, and Singapore's first sports school is set to open in 2003.

But some sports experts say the government may have difficulties in meeting its 2010 deadline for a "sportspower Singapore". For starters, Singapore still has a very long way to go in competitive sports. In the Bangkok Asian Games in 1998, it came in 17th in the total medal haul, with two gold, three silver and nine bronze medals. In comparison, 10th place Uzbekistan had six gold, 22 silver and 12 bronze.

Dr Ben Tan also says that there needs to be a change first in the Singaporean mindset before that happens. A former athlete who won a total of four medals in four consecutive Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, Tan says it is difficult to find Singaporeans willing to make sacrifices in the name of sports - and consider it a "proper" career.

Tan is now a sports doctor at the Singapore Sports Council. He recalls that when he was at the peak of his competitive sailing, he had put his career on hold for a year during one of the SEA games to train fulltime. He says he had overseas friends who would take up loans from banks just so they could compete. But Tan says it would be hard to find Singaporeans who would do the same.

"I can't imagine Singaporeans willing to invest that much," he says, "[but] in New Zealand and other parts of the world, it's a normal thing. They don't think twice about it and when I think that way and I am among them, I'm normal but when I think that way amongst Singaporeans, I'm like a freak."

Others point to the dilemma young Singaporean athletes have in trying to train the best they can in a society that values academic pursuits more than sports. Mark Chay, who represented Singapore in swimming at the Sydney Olympics, confesses that juggling studies and sports can be a very unpleasant experience. He recalls in particular the time when he had to prepare for school-leaving examinations as the Asian Games were coming up in 1998.

"I had to juggle training, studies and sanity," says the 19-year-old. "It's kind of horrible, I lost all perspectives of why I was doing it."

Accomplished swimmer and now managing director of Aquatic Performance Swim School, Ang Peng Siong also says that most parents would think twice about wanting their children who are sports-inclined to aim for the Olympics. Siong himself has won 20 gold medals in eight SEA Games and was one of Asia's fastest swimmers in 1996. But he says parents would question if the sacrifice is worthwhile, because the normal route for Singaporeans would be to go to university and get a good career.

Siong says a typical Singaporean parent would ask, "If they [their children] go into sports, what kind of career do they have?"

Chay, who was crowned "Sports Boy of the Year" recently, apparently agrees. He also says, "I think a lot of Singaporeans can do it [achieve gold medals], but their motivation is not on sports but on other things which ensures them a future."

Sports experts say it is rare to have parents like those of SEA Games gold medallist Alvin Lee who supported their child's foray into competitive water polo even to the detriment of his studies. The 20-year-old Lee says his parents did not ask him to drop the sport even when he was not performing well academically. In fact, he says, his father would fetch him after his daily training. Lee, who was only nine years old when he took up water polo, says he himself had wanted to quit playing but his parents talked to him and motivated him to continue with the sport.

Still, such dedication is uncommon. Eric Song of the Singapore Sports Council reveals that there are currently only 15 out of more than 500 national athletes who are actually participating in sports fulltime. Song believes that Singapore is slowly building up its sporting strength but he acknowledges that most, if not all, Singaporean athletes do not to consider sports as a career, partly because of their concern of not being able to win big.

Or as he puts it, "Perhaps one is then not sure whether one can really make it as a champion?"

Song says a sports career is very much unlike other fields where paper qualifications are paramount. "For sports, you either make it or you don't," he says.

For all these factors, ex-competitive sailing champion Tan says that the sports industry is growing and there are now many job prospects in sports, especially for athletes worried about their short competitive span and the opportunities for a life after sports that are not limited to coaching.

Song, for his part, remarks, "I think you have to take a while, you have to build a culture and we have to then make it viable for people who think that if you don't make it to the top, then there's something for them. It's just as good as any other career or profession."

(Inter Press Service)

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©2001 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

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