An Olympic medal is hard, it is reachable, but it depends on all of us
IT is round, attached to a ribbon, has an 85mm diameter, weighs over 450g and everyone wants one.
The Olympic medal.
You can’t buy it and yet the price people will pay for it is scary.
Female runners have taken on fundamentalists and shooters do commando courses. Swimmers train seven days a week and runners change cities. Hockey players don’t see their kids for a year and athletes do two jobs.
Still, no medal.
Still, people try.
Before Tokyo began, of 205 participating National Olympic Committees 72 had never won a medal and 120 hadn’t won gold. India came to the shooting in Tokyo with three world No.1s and won nothing. The standard is not high here, it’s out of sight. The slowest man in a final in Tokyo was faster than you think.
Singapore won no medal and yet as we continue to chase it, work for it, coach for it, fund it, plan for it, let’s never forget as we hand out judgements that winning this medal is complicated.
At India’s shooting national meet, this is how many shooters show up: Almost 4,000. In Singapore? Roughly 330. Our lack of base is one handicap, the interference of academia is another. Sport is an education in itself, but we don’t see it that way.
Excellence is born of obsession and an undistracted brain. But in Tokyo one diver was completing his assignments while at the 2019 SEA Games a swimmer was doing an exam online.
Medals don’t come like this, medals don’t come with compromise, and medals don’t often come without experience. A first Games is initiation into the drama and it can be unsettling. One champion, an atheist, would go to the multi-faith hall at the Games to find silence. He won gold on his third try.
So let’s congratulate athletes who get to a first Games but let’s push them to return. Making an Olympics is only a first step, the medal, literally, is the highest step. In between are the acronyms.
After the 1,500m women’s final, for instance, these letters, “NR, PB, SB” could be found next to the times. Short form for National Record, Personal Best and Season Best. These are the middle steps to the medal, when you can’t yet beat the best but in the moment can find your best.
We have fine athletes in Singapore but we’re confronted by an entire planet in a competitive mood. Syria had a weightlifting medal and San Marino, whose population is smaller than Novena’s, had three.
Why can’t we?
But a nation’s Olympic performance often reflects the very society it comes from. Excellence is driven by the culture and how much we progress depends on how much we’re willing to sacrifice. Medals come only if we decide they have worth.
An athlete who comes 24th is only the final product of a system. If we hold them accountable, then what about us? High performance demands an ecosystem of ideas, ruthlessness and belief. It is national associations, run by volunteers, who lean on experts. It is parents, coaches, fans, officials, schools, sponsors, government, all banded together in a conspiracy to overthrow average standards. It is patience, for the seven-yearolds whom Joseph Schooling inspired will take 15 years to develop.
National service is fundamental and primary, but an official told me: “No Singaporean male has ever made an Olympic final, or top eight, after having completed national service.” Defence always outweighs sport, but in a creative nation there must be inventive solutions.
A medal or six is not going to alter Singapore, though let’s not underestimate the passing joy of bragging. But the chase of a medal will build a wider nation that plays and it is a healthy idea. Distinction in any field is a noble pursuit.
Long ago, a Tibetan monk told the writer Pico Iyer during the 1992 Olympics: “More will lose than win.” It is the way of the Games. We crave medals and yet we fall, we dust ourselves off and we try again. This struggle, surely, is the essence of it all.
Singapore did not win a medal in Tokyo but its athletes have struggled, they have cut a path, they are the human building blocks to a better sporting nation. When they left Tokyo they received a pin which is given to participants. It is of the five rings affixed to the Olympic torch and it is the most fitting of things.
No one gets here without fire. – The Straits Times/asia News Network