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Finally, it was a silver medal for Singapore after 48 long years. Li Jiawei, Feng Tianwei and Wang Yuegu came in 2nd in the women's table tennis team event yesterday at the Olympics. It was a proud moment to see Singapore flag hung up high with China and Korea.It was expected that the girls would walk away with silver. After all, they were playing against China top rated team, consisting of the World's number 1 and 2 players. Of course, some also had commented that it was just a game of China against China - these 3 girls and their coach were all born and trained in China and recruited to Singapore for their paddling skills.
This controversy of foreign born players vs true blue local Singaporean players will not end just yet; however, this silver does set the standard for our local athletes. They finally have something to emulate - it is a hard slog to get to the top, but if you remain dedicated to your sports, your reward will eventually come. The lesson to be learnt is tremendous, though we undeniably still have a very long and tedious journey in sports.
3 comments:
I reckon its better for the sport. If not the the gals, the top team from their country of birth wouldn't be challenged at all.
but do these paddlers challenge or inspire the younger generation enough for Singapore? Maybe not. The culture needs to be revamped totally before that can happen?
Thats a very good topic of discussion for sports psychologist, and I definitely agree on your comment on revamping the sporting culture in SG. The key question is, what inspires the young generation in SG?
What I feel is, a lot of the locals find it difficult to relate to the medal winners. From what I’ve noticed in the past couple of years, we’ve grown to adopt a healthier, sporting lifestyle which is great. But what is interesting is there is mainly growth in what I call ego sports and trendy sports. Ego sports are those which make you look good, sports which you can boast about (eg, my bike is costlier than yours, I’ve accomplished a ultra, they always geared in the most trendy & expensive outfits) which is really popular with execs. Then there’s the trendy sports, which are new to sg or clubs which you look good in.
There are still lots of enthusiasts out there who still compete or participate for the love of the sport. My question is, how do we try to help improve the performance or results of these enthusiasts and at the same time ensuring commercial success by increasing participation for sports events? No point getting everyone involved if we cannot keep him or her attracted to the sport. It’s only short-term commercial benefit, not long-term participation. Why are relying so much on corporate sponsorship? Long ago I still remembered CC & RC’s organising fun runs once a year at grassroots level, are we still doing them?
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