During the SEA Games 2007, there were mixed feeling within
me.
When the Pingpong team won all the gold medals, I felt rather
pleased and proud. But when I saw all the team
members are from China, all these feelings were gone.
Wth? I certainly wont consider these athletes as Singaporeans
despite the fact they wore our national jerseys during the SEA
Games. Look at other nations like Malaysia and Thailand. Even
though they din win any pingpong gold medals, their citizens can
still feel proud because these athletes are local born, local breed
and locally trained. Truely Malaysian/Thai athletes.
The same goes for other sports such as soccer and badminton.
Look at the soccer national team. We have Chinaman, Nigerians,
British, Serb... and the list goes on.
I definitely wont feel proud for success that are being
bought.
I view the import of these sports FT as MNCs being attracted
into SG. You see, EDB was like giving perks and tax exemptions to
professionally beg these MNCs to come to SG. No doubt they create
jobs, BUT, there will always be negligible transfer of tacit skills
and technology to SG. When there is some turbulence in SG, these
MNCs will just relocate with a blink of an eye.
I feel that in the Sports Arena, we too became professional
beggars in attracting these sports FT to SG with promise of
citizenship, attractive prize money, education and housing perks.
However, their allegience lies in their own homeland. Once they
earn enough money, they return to their homeland. And talk about
the grooming and transfer of skills and knowledge to SG players:
this is actually quite minimial.
I believe SG should stop all these 'impossible-to-excel" sports
like Soccer, Badminton, Atheltics and focus on our core strengths
in Swimming, Gymnasium, Shooting, Bowling, water polo and Sailing.
These are the sports that we have seen Good SG talents performing.
That should be the way to go.
