SOUTH EAST ASIAN GAMES IN VIETNAM (Assessment of Team Singapore's performance)

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SOUTH EAST ASIAN GAMES IN VIETNAM:

(Assessment of Team Singapore's performance): 8.

Dr Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman asked the Minister for Community Development and Sports (a) what is his assessment of Team Singapore's performance at the recent Vietnam

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SEA Games; (b) whether the schemes that have been put in place to promote sporting excellence in Singapore are producing the desired results; and (c) how can Singapore learn from countries like Vietnam who are able to produce numerous gold medallists within a short period of time.

Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: Sir, Singapore won a total of 113 medals, comprising 30 Golds, 33 Silvers and 50 Bronzes, and finished in the sixth position at the recent SEA Games in Vietnam. At the last SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur in 2001, Singapore won a total of 95 medals which comprised 22 Golds, 32 Silvers and 41 Bronzes.

Singapore participated in 23 out of the total of 32 sports, and won medals in 19 of these sports. In contrast

,: at the KL SEA Games, only 17 out of 30 sports won medals, and this was notwithstanding a bigger contingent of athletes compared to the numbers we sent to Vietnam.

So, Sir, it is clear that Singapore's performance has improved significantly at the 22 nd SEA Games in Vietnam.

The traditionally performing sports continued to do well, eg, table tennis won six gold medals, swimming brought us nine golds, eight silvers and six bronzes, and silat brought us three golds, two silvers and 10 bronzes.

**** Sports which have not done so well in the past have shown much improvement in the recent games. Athletics brought us four golds, four silvers and one bronze; bodybuilding, three golds, one silver and three bronzes; badminton, one gold and five bronzes. In addition, there were a few emerging sports. Gymnastics brought us three silvers and one bronze, and fencing brought us four bronzes.

Sir, there is a greater breadth and depth in our sports scene today. More

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athletes in more disciplines are able to win medals. It is also encouraging to note that out of the 165 athletes who won medals, 30% or 47 athletes were below the age of 18 years. All these augur well for sports in Singapore.

Dr Maliki also asked whether the schemes that have been put in place to promote sporting excellence in Singapore are producing the desired results. Currently, various support schemes are available for our athletes and National Sports Associations. Athletes under the Athlete Career and Training Programme and spexGLOW, which basically help to make up for loss of wages of athletes whilst training full-time, contributed to about 70% of the gold medals won at last year's SEA Games. In particular, Joscelin Yeo, Christel Bouvron and Li Jia Wei displayed outstanding performances at the Games.

This showed that the enhanced support schemes had enabled the athletes to train full time and be exposed to higher standard of competitions, both locally and internationally.

In addition to funding support, athletes also received support in the form of greater use of sports science, exposure to more overseas training and competitions, and team building and motivational programmes.

The National Sports Associations (NSAs) have also been given much higher financial support than in previous years. Emerging sports like fencing and gymnastics, which received a two-fold increase in funding, put up commendable performances and won a combined total of three silver and five bronze medals.

In addition to financial support, the Singapore Sports Council helped the NSAs to develop multi-year high performance programmes, hire Technical Directors and coaches. Assistance was also provided in

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terms of athlete selection, preparation, training methodology as well as logistics support during the Games. All these have paid off as the NSAs have shown that they were better organised and prepared for the SEA Games last year.

As to what we can learn from Vietnam, we will need to concentrate on a few selected sports and not spread ourselves too thinly. Many of the Vietnam's teams and athletes train full-time. In Singapore, there will be fewer athletes who would willingly give up their careers or studies to train full-time for long periods of time. Hence, it is important that we have schemes to support and encourage such athletes. It is also important that we work with all parties, whether schools or employers, so that the athletes are able to spend more time at training.

Singapore has an edge in terms of technology and advances in sports medicine and sports science, which have greatly helped our athletes prepare for high level competitions. We should continue to improve our sports science capabilities and ensure that NSAs, coaches and athletes are well appraised of technological and sports science developments.

Dr Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman: Sir, I thank the Minister for the detailed response. I would like to ask what are the criteria that are used in setting targets for international meets like the SEA Games because I understand that for the previous games, the target was 22 golds and was based on the performance in the KL Games. Why is the target not set higher than the previous performance? Why is it based on the previous performance?

Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: Sir, the target was not set by us. The CDM (Chef De Mission) himself decided that he

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wanted to put a target for himself. But I think that is commendable to be able to push the athletes. What we do after every game is that we will review the performance of our athletes and our NSAs, look at the areas in which we have done well and the areas that we need to improve. I am very reluctant to do a crystal-ball gazing and decide what should be put as a number for ourselves. But internally, we know that there are some areas where we can improve and really aim for it.

As a matter of fact, some of the NSAs themselves have decided to put up some of these criteria internally so that they are guided by this target. We have kept the target internally as a planning tool for ourselves. Ultimately, what we want to do is to try and encourage all the athletes to maximise their potential. We performed well in the KL Games. I think we should try and improve even further than that, which we did. Setting at 22, which was the gold medals that we achieved at KL, means that we want to try at least to reach to the same level. To be able to do 30 is actually a tremendous improvement on our part. So we will learn from this experience and this should help us guide for the future Games.

Mr Ng Ser Miang: Sir, may I first congratulate the athletes and MCDS on the outstanding performance in Vietnam. Can I ask the Minister what additional support and funding would be provided so that the athletes and NSAs can continue to do well in the future SEA Games?

Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: Sir, I thank the hon. Member for the question because I think it is an important question. We are now going through a review of all the NSAs. We have done well, all of those who have participated in the recent Games. This will allow us to assess. We do have funding criteria that look at the performances of the various sports. I would like to assure the Member

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that this review is being done currently with the view to assist NSAs. Even those NSAs which are emerging, which have shown potentials in the recent Games, we will look at it closely and see whether or not we could help them even further, not only in terms of funding support, but other types of support that may be needed to push their sports even further.

Mr Zainudin Nordin (Bishan-Toa Payoh: ): Sir, may I ask the Minister what are other new programmes that MCDS will introduce to improve the overall sporting environment and also the sporting culture in Singapore? I would also like to ask the Minister how he intends to uplift the reputation and also the respectability view of the public towards our sportsmen in Singapore.

Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: I think our sports champions are well-respected by Singaporeans in general. When Ronald and the badminton team did well in the recent Commonwealth Games and subsequently in the Singapore Open competition, there was a lot of support among Singaporeans for him and our badminton team. We will continue to find ways to expose our sportsmen and sportswomen to the general public, especially with the young, so that there is a base of young Singaporeans who may be interested to follow the careers of these athletes and see what we can do to increase their image and profile.

As to the new programmes, I will leave it to the SSC to explore on what are the things that we need to do. At this point in time, we are confident that the system that we put in place is adequate to meet the targets that we have set for ourselves in the Committee on Sporting Singapore. Participation rate amongst Singaporeans towards sports is on the rise. The recent SEA Games shows that we are able to achieve a higher level of excellence. But having said that, I will assure the Member that we will not rest

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on our laurels. We will explore other ways to see how we can not only increase sports participation, but also continue to develop the sports industry in Singapore and to push for sports excellence in Singapore.