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Table Tennis Saga: Part 2

I have so much thoughts about importing talents directly just for winning this Olympic silver medal that I have to blog about it again.

A nice article to read here.

Some of the important points I like to highlight from the article.

In a sense these players from China have no choice but to be made citizens if they wish to represent Singapore. They also come to us with the sole intention of advancing their goal of being recognised sportswomen. Inasmuch as we want them to win for us, they also want to win on account of us. It is a reciprocal, symbiotic relationship that can be devoid of any values as it is deemed a fair exchange.

Putting on a shirt with the national flag emblazed on it has now become a business transaction. You come play for us, we give you money and opportunities to train overseas, you win a medal, you get the honour as a player, you get money as prize reward, and we get to erase 48 years of haunting memory of not winning an Olympic medal.

One wonders whether the three players spar with our local talents to improve their skills. Apparently, the focus is just on getting the medal and not improving the standard of the sport in general.

Singapore Table Tennis Association general manager Jackie Tay was quoted saying this: Being a role model NSA is not key for us as our vision and mission is in elite deveopment and high participation,

This was after the association was not included by the Singapore Sports Council as one of the role model sports association when allocation of funding to the various sports associations was announced.

We need to consider how we could be instilling in the minds of our young that they are not valued as much as foreign talent, as it may take too long to nurture them to high-level performance. Could we unwittingly be communicating that we would prefer to import than to invest money and energy to nurture local potential sportsmen and women? It could also be possible that we would be telling our young that it is not worth their efforts trying to aspire to be winners since we can always go hunting for ready-made winners.

Singapore has always been attracting many ready-made winners from various industries such as the financial services, R&D, academics etc. These are niche areas where the influx of such foreign ‘talents’ helps to promote the industry, where the ‘talents’ help bring in ideas from abroad and help our locals achieve graeater heights. But in sports where only winners are remembered and the barrier to entry into becoming a full time sportsman is so high, does such importing of these foreign ‘talents’ discourage local people from chasing the Olympic dream? Its like importing a soon-to-be-made Nobel Prize winner, where the work he has done for winning the Nobel Prize was 95% done back in his home country. Do we then celebrate his success and proudly proclaim Singapore has produced a nobel prize winner?

Differentiating an immigrant from an import

Sometimes we refer to the fact that Singapore is a nation where our forefathers were primarily migrants. Hence there is no reason why we cannot now attract foreign talents to bolster our chances of success in every field and win Olympics medals as well.

This seems to confuse the issue, as we are not differentiating between an immigrant and an import.

For example, mention was made that all our Olympics medallists hail from China, with particular reference to Tan Howe Liang, our original silver medallist.

But there is a difference between Tan Howe Liang and the table-tennis China girls.

Tan Howe Liang migrated to Singapore, not to be a weightlifter or to win Olympics medals but to live and work. He made Singapore his home and became a weightlifter on his own initiative. When he finally made it to the Olympics, he did it with his own resources and when he returned as our hero, there was hardly any fanfare.

Tao Li was the same. She didn’t come here to become a superstar swimmer. Her mother brought her here to improve her English. Only when it was evident of her talent in the pool that she started becoming a sportswoman. That is why I am more proud of Tao Li’s 5th placing in the 100m butterfly than the silver medal. I think I am just disgusted that the table tennis association took a easy shortcut to success. If success is so important, we should just buy Michael Phelps over, he can easily win us 5 alone.

Last thing to ponder about. Putting Li Jia Wei aside, if Feng Tianwei and Wang Yuegu are not so auntie (as some online citizens has pointed out) and look like Zhang Ziyi and Liu Yifei instead, will we embrace them as Singapore citizens more easily?