A Big Fish
Singaporean swimmer Joseph Schooling tests the waters and prepares his best timings before heading off to the Tokyo Olympics
Depending on how you look at it, Joseph Schooling is either at the tail end of his career or just getting started. Singapore’s first and only Olympic gold medallist might be on has last lap as a competitive swimmer. The forthcoming Tokyo Olympics will likely be his swan song after almost two decades in the pool, but his future is just on the starting blocks.
“The first thing I think about is glass half-full and glass half-empty,” says the 25-year-old from his training base in Virginia, in the US, funnily enough making an analogy that involves water. “I like the second one better. It’s like a spring, diving off a block into what’s next.”
Regardless of what the reigning 100-metre Olympic butterfly champion and two-time Asian Games winner decides, Schooling already has written himself into the annals of Singapore’s history as one of its most successful athletes. Medals aside, Schooling has amassed more than $1 million in incentives, and outside the pool, his commercial deals with Toyota, Hugo Boss, Tag Heuer, Canon and DBS Bank have reportedly earned him a seven-figure sum. Only former footballing star Fandi Ahmad comes close to matching the swimmer’s star power.
There has been talk that a job in wealth management is already on the table whenever Schooling, an economics major from the University of Austin, is ready to take it. He has also launched his own swim school and a fitness app.
“I would say I’m nervous because athletes are hardwired to want to be able to control the situation, and that’s impossible, because in life you can't really control anything,” Schooling says. “I’m excited to do something different, I'm excited to place 100 per cent of my energy and focus on building something completely unrelated.”
Schooling’s hunger to succeed was evident even at the age of six, when he made a commitment to himself to compete at the Olympics, after hearing stories about his grand-uncle Lloyd Valberg, a high-jumper, who became Singapore’s first ever Olympian at the 1948 Games. He also notes his discipline to follow a schedule and ability to find inner-peace and happiness are traits that will serve him as a businessman as well.
“You can take people out of any field and put them anywhere,” he says. “The crazy thing is if you speak to high-performing people, you’re going to hear them talk about different things, but the mindset is all the same, and that just says it all.”
Had the Tokyo Olympics been held in 2020 as planned, he is the first to admit that he would not have been ready to defend his title. A sub-par performance at the 2019 SEA Games, concerns over his weight, and perhaps a wrong decision to return to Singapore for his Olympic preparation meant he would have headed to Tokyo a shadow of his former self.
But their postponement bought Schooling one more year to train. Since moving back to the US to train under his former coach, Sergio Lopez, he has found his groove.
“I just think I’ve been too comfortable in Singapore,” he says. “I love being home, but I’m just so used to being in the US that I’m subconsciously already locked into what I need to do.”
In what could be a preview to the Olympic final, Schooling came in second, with a time of 52.93 seconds, in the 100m fly at the ISCA International Senior Cup in March, sandwiched between fellow Olympic hopefuls
“You can take people out of any field and put them anywhere ... You’re going to hear them talk about different things, but the mindset is all the same, and that just says it all”
“I love being home, but I’m just so used to being in the US that I’m subconsciously already locked into what I need to do”
Caeleb Dressel (51.69) and Jack Conger (53.05).
While the timing is still a long way from his personal best and Olympic-winning effort of 50.39 secs, the race against Dressel, the 100m butterfly world record holder (49.50), was an important step.
“Caeleb’s the guy to be beat right now,” says Schooling. “He’s the man everyone is chasing, so just being in the same heat, you need to be comfortable racing him.”
But to stand a chance of striking gold again, he’ll need to cut his time down below 50 seconds. Apart from Americans Dressel and Conger, Kristof Milak of Hungary, who clocked a personal best of 50.47 seconds in March, and 2016 Olympic silver medallist Chad le
Clos will be Schooling’s biggest rivals for a medal.
In fact, he views the 2021 field as tighter than the 2016 line-up, which featured American swimming legend and Schooling’s childhood idol Michael Phelps. Phelps, Le Clos and Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh all finished an unprecedented joint-second (51.14).
“It’s going to be a very different race,” says Schooling. “At the top, the discrepancy is going to be a little more than what it was in Rio. Whatever it is, it’s going to be one heck of a ride.”
It is a ride that Singaporeans will follow closely. Thousands lined the streets for his Schooling’s victory parade in 2016. And this connection with his fans is what he cherishes most.
“In the beginning I didn’t really understand what that meant,” says Schooling, whose chance meeting as a 13-year-old with Phelps, his idol, was a pivotal point in his Olympic journey. “I thought: OK, cool, you see this person so happy for taking a picture, for example, or talking to them for 30 seconds, and you think: what’s the big deal? But down the line, the more you see, the more you understand, and once you start understanding the impact of it, that’s when the magic starts.”