A recent spread on the The Straits Times showed a “grading system” for the athletes who participated in the recently-concluded South East Asian Games.
While the Philippines was the overall champion in the games since they took home the most number of medals, Singapore took home 56 gold medals, 46 silver, and 68 bronze, putting the country in sixth place based on medal rankings.
With the games over and the athletes arriving home, Singapore decided to take stock of the experience, and someone had the “bright” idea to judge the performance of all the sports Singapore participated in.
They then turned it into a “report card” that was published on The Straits Times.
While Singapore and its citizens are indeed grateful for the effort the athletes put into the games, Singaporean sports officials are dismayed with what they say is one of the poorest showings of Singapore in the history of the SEA Games.
Singapore Sports Institute’s (SSI) head of high performance and athlete life Richard Gordon said that the athletics fraternity is to blame for the allegedly poor performance.
“We’ve seen a decline in results over the past three SEA Games. We’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes in terms of trying to help (them) to stabilise. But they seem to have a propensity for infighting within the fraternity … what I am going to say is that you need to get your act together,” Gordon said at a press conference, as reported by ChannelNewsAsia.
This comes even as some members of the Singaporean Football team have been reprimanded and named publicly for breaking curfew in Manila, while they were lodged for the games.
Unnamed sources from a Channel News Asia report said that the footballers broke curfew on the night of their loss to Thailand. The “report card” had given them an F.
What do netizens have to say?
Local sports fans, amateurs, supports, and even people who don’t care about sports have weighed in on what has been a trying return for some of the athletes.
In a public post, Singaporean Facebook user Sharmaine Chan said, ” So to whoever thought of this idea – If this is how you want to deter our future potential rising athletes from pursuing what they love because all they will get is a report card, then you’re doing one bloody good job guys.”
She also asked if a report card is what Singapore gives back to their athletes–a blanket treatment of everyone’s efforts and results, like a grading system.
Another post on Facebook by Singapore People’s Party’s Raymond Lim criticized the publication on The Straits Times.
He criticized the way Singaporean sports are allegedly funded, saying that games with better potential for getting old medals get better funding. He said, ” We provide additional campaign funding for sports which are only gold medal potential at the Southeast Asian Games, while we have athletes who have to pay for their own trainers, coaches and even their overseas stints just to prepare for the Games. “
He also called out how other athletes are forced to pay for their own trainers. He also said that the grading system of A to F does not take into consideration the battle what the athletes face.
What do you think of The Straits Time’s report card on our SEA Games performance? Let us know in the comments!
