Monday, January 15, 2007

I shall discuss how come Singapore has yet to produce a world class sportsman yet.

My guy friends and i actually discussed about this during our Coffee Bean session last saturday evening.

I have more opinions about this.

It is very easy and effortless to attribute to the reason to things like lack of talent. While this may be true to some extent, i think that there lies many other reasons which we should address

For one, parents are not supportive and do not believe that one can make a career out of sports. I do agree that this was the case in the past, things have changed for a better now. Yet, parents' mentality fail to move on with the changes. Indeed, things are " Study hard and be a doctor/engineer when you grow up." are so often heard.

No one has ever said " I wish you will grow up and be a great sportsman like Sharapova or Ronaldo."

How can we ever produce a world class full time sportsman if the parents do not even believe that their child could be world class? Maybe if we could allow ourselves to take a calculated risk and not to stick to convention of becoming a doctor/engineer is the way to be successful, our chances to produce good sportsman will be higher.

It is precisely this lack of support that dampens the entire sport faternity spirit. Just imagine other children in other countries have starting to train at the age of four or five, children in Singapore are actually busy learning piano, phonics or even tuition. And we even openly declare our desire to produce top notch sportsman?

Even the whole idea of using money to produce sportsman may not work. How many of the world class players are playing for money? Most play for passion and desire to excel. Of course, money and fame come in when you are world top 10. In short, Singaporean lack the hunger and desire to be the world's best.

I will probably talk about tennis because this is the only sports i know. Look at how China has vastly improved in the Women's Tour over these few years. It has nothing to do with physical size or wealth. If China can produce Top 20 players and Thailand can produce Paradorn, it makes one wonder why Singapore has yet to do so.

Anyway, i dun tink the level of support the national associations has anything to do with the drought. The best players are spotted and sent for training by their parents at the tender age, not wait for the associations to spot them and train them. This kind of passive action by parents do work.

Indeed, not all the talented kids will turn out to be world class player. It may take 1000 or more full time people before 1 world class or legend will appear. But it takes one parent to kill off one legend in the making.

Will Singapore get to produce this scene?