Proudest Moment?

I read this online, someone's thought about the Singapore Table Tennis Team. This is exactly what I meant about, Singapore may eventually get the gold, but will this make everyone proud of the moment ?


The guy wrote this ..

This becomes a precedent that the foreign talent scheme works. It will be the model case study for all future cases. And the Singapore Sport Council will have more ammo in terms of money to get more foreign talents to Singapore. Forget about grooming the locals. Why invest in such a big risk? Just go buy another athletes from elsewhere to help us win. Besides, other countries are doing that too. So why not Singapore?

Yes, the Foreign Talent Scheme works in the sense that it does bring us an Olympic medal. But it kills the entire local sporting scene. How do we groom local athletes when all we think about is to bring foreign talents in to help us win? How do the local athletes gain international competition exposure when we always send foreign talents oversea? How do we motivate our local athletes when all the media attention are on the foreign talents? Who will dare to send their child to the Sport School when there is a high chance that we will bring in a foreign talent to replace them if they don’t perform up to standard?

We are only interested in the results. Not the process in getting the results. It doesn’t matter who gets the medal. You don’t need to be a local. You don’t need to stay in Singapore for long. You don’t need to speak with a Singapore acent. You don’t need to know the Singapore history. You don’t need to understand Singapore culture. You can even drag the Singapore flag on the floor for the world to see. So long as you get the medal under Singapore flag, the rest doesn’t matter.

This is the sad state of Singapore sporting scene. And it will remain this way until someone wakes up from the medal chasing dream. It’s not about medal. It’s about representation. It’s about national identity. And this foreign talent scheme is eroding our national identity, if there is any to begin with.

So while everyone is out there celebrating the Olympic medal, I sit infront of my computer with mixed reaction. I should be happy that Singapore finally won a medal after 48 years. But I just couldn’t feel the pride and glory. In fact, I feel sad because we will start having the mentality of getting new migrants to help us in sports.

Congrats to Li Jiawei, Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei for winning the Silver Medal. But sorry, I don’t know how to celebrate your victory.