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Nurturing world class athletes locally a risky gamble |
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By Belmont Lay
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Aug. 26 2008 |
The daunting reality of failing to achieve anything significant in the lifetime of an athlete is a dark side of sports that is not talked about very often.
A seldom acknowledged fact is that sporting achievement has a tendency to bias the winners. The general public seldom pay attention to the non-winners that drop out of competition, fail to qualify or finish outside the top three.
 Along with the victories, the winners receive the majority of sponsorship deals, accolades from fellow competitors and recognition from swooning fans.
The non-winners face the inevitable decline into obscurity. This is even before they manage to make a lasting impression in public.
And there exist a disproportionately larger group of invisible non-winners compared to prominent winners in the limelight.
Every four years, the Olympic Games opening and closing ceremony serves as a timely reminder that there are thousands of world class athletes vying to be the best in what is considerably the biggest sporting event.
To feature the large pool of competitors on television or in the newspaper, whether or not they might be worthy medal contenders, is already a tall order.
Now try to contemplate the combined Herculean effort from the perspective of all winning and non-winning athletes as they prepare for the competition and the opportunity just to come out tops for a shot to be in the limelight.
Many of them have chosen to forego a “normal” existence for a solitary goal. They dedicate their lives to doing the daily grunt work of training, recuperating and competing.
And many of these athletes will regrettably have to live in the shadow of other athletes who have outperformed them.
The severely pronounced inequality of sporting achievement conveniently hides the non-winners from sight, regardless of how equally hard they might have trained.
But this might also be the distinction that makes sporting excellence or failure an unparalleled experience in the human condition.
Take American swimmer Michael Phelps as an example. Having clinched a record-breaking eight gold medals, Phelps has proven his worth and sealed his fate as one of the greatest Olympians of all time.
His win of eight successive medals has been one of the most talked about and analysed events this Olympic Games.
Conversely, athletes cut a tragic figure when failure hits them in the midst of high expectations during competitions.
Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang's withdrawal from the highly-anticipated 110-metre hurdles event, exemplifies not only the abject failure of being unable to live up to reputation and hard work, but the unpredictability that besets the sporting environment.
While pundits were comfortable enough to be boldly proclaiming Phelps' unprecedented success before the Olympic Games, no one came close to predicting as confidently that Liu would fail to even start the race.
Technically, and not for want of trying, Liu did line himself up for the race but it was a false start. He decided to withdraw because of an alleged agonising foot injury.
To add insult to injury, Chinese fans are probably harbouring the sentiment that Liu's 2004 Athens Olympic Games hurdles victory, which established him as one of their brightest stars, is itself a false start.
That 2004 win launched his career from obscurity to worldwide fame as a contender for the best hurdler by the next Olympic Games, but Liu had failed to live up to that notion.
Even though this Olympic defeat might not be sufficient to send Liu back to obscurity, coming up short has already bestowed upon him the nastier repute of notoriety
This is evident from the castigation and allegations he has received for purportedly throwing the race.
These two examples show how athletes can be remembered for their best and worst performances. Whether they win or lose, it can be of an overwhelmingly large magnitude and a single event is sufficient to turn their fortunes around.
How then would Singapore approach the issue of nurturing local sporting talent, bearing in mind that success and attendant pressures in this field have highly asymmetrical payoffs?
Based on Singapore's well-documented obsessive attitude towards success in general, wanting to nurture local sure-winners in the realm of sports would represent a big risk to take.
One concern, of the pragmatic economic variety, includes calculating benefit over cost when it comes time to evaluate whether investment in athletes has been worthwhile.
As there are no deterministic formulae to prescribe in producing the best athletes, what is required more of is a big leap of faith to embrace the probability of failure as being greater than success.
But this sort of sentiment and sound rationale can be hard to summon, given the limited pool of top athletes Singapore can afford to nurture and with all hope pinned on them to deliver the medals.
The asymmetrical nature of sporting achievement can then be likened to a risky gamble due to the sheer uncertainty of the odds of winning or losing, and the magnitude of the success or failure.
Will Singapore be able to learn how to be gracious and understanding enough to consider a medal-less outing to the Olympic Games a wonderful one as well?
This question is even harder to answer given the recent surprising dismissal of Antony Lee, Singapore table tennis team manager, even after the women’s table tennis team brought home an Olympic silver medal.
The last thing Singapore would want to do is to vilify the hard work of its home grown athletes or manager just because they are presumed to have underperformed.
Or even worse, vilify those with exceptional talent but who just did not manage to live up to the defining moment of deciding the winner, as is the case with Liu and the Chinese public.
All is not lost though. Judging by the women's table tennis silver medal win, Singapore might have already hit upon the practical solution of importing foreign talent to win the medals for us.
This is an acceptable compromise. Although some Singaporeans might begrudge the silver medallists trio, comprising Li Jiawei, Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei for not being Singapore-born players, there is a need to consider the flip side.
Their China-born status might have taken a bit out of the win, but would it not be interesting to question how Singaporeans might have reacted if our very own Singapore-born table tennis players had failed to win anything even after lots of hard work?
The difficulty of finding and training eligible home grown athletes from a young age is itself recognition of the unsavoury odds at attempting to become an Olympic winner.
Simply put, Singapore has learnt to hedge her risk and avoid an unwise gamble of only concentrating on fostering local talents.
Imported talent are tasked with a duty to perform. If they fail to do so, Singaporeans can still take heart because, at least, it is not one of our own Singapore-born talents.
If the imported talent win something, Singaporeans are free to rejoice even though we might have wished it was one of our own born and bred locals who have done it.
On hindsight, the ending of Singapore’s 48-year Olympic medal drought is probably a bittersweet victory after all.
Achieving a silver medal might have accomplished one of our objectives, but it pales in comparison to the other more dramatic record-breaking successes such as those set by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt in the track and field events.
Gold hauls will continue to hog headlines. That is the nature of competition.
Our solitary Olympic silver medal will serve as a humble reminder that recognition will only favour the best.
The rest of the world is not as impressed as we are with our silver medal.
Coming in second best leaves us just as vulnerable to the biases of sports as the other non-winners, because recognition naturally gravitates towards the devastatingly brilliant athletes, such as Phelps and Bolt who fascinate the public with their sporting endeavours.
Or some what unfortunately, infamy has a tendency to follow the likes of those such as Liu who bombed spectacularly.
Singapore-born athletes, you have been warned. The pursuit of the elusive Olympic gold medal can be an unwise gamble with the seemingly insurmountable odds stacked against all non-winners, and even silver medallists.
The public’s fascination of successes can be misleading because there are often far more non-winners who never get a chance to share their story. |
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