Co-written with Charis Chua

Achieving a treble at the 2019/20 Polytechnic-Institute of Technical Education (POL-ITE) Games with victories in the Men’s 5000m, 10000m and Road Race events, Selvanther Sivarajan, 23, was primed for success in athletics. 
 
As a 19-year-old rising star, he had been training with the under-20 national athletics team. Yet, four years later, Sivarajan has hung up his running shoes. The Nanyang Technological University undergraduate had a passion for the sport. However, the lack of support for the local track scene quickly doused his fire, making him just one of many local student-athletes with wasted potential.
 
With compulsory co-curricular activities, Singapore has an abundance of track and field athletes at the school level. Yet, few choose to pursue athletics once they enter tertiary education, and even fewer see it as a lucrative venture in adulthood. 
 
To Sivarajan, it is simply too difficult to be a full-time athlete without sufficient funding.
 
“I don’t think it can be a profession. It has to be a hobby because you need to have your own job,” he added. 
 
National distance runner Shawn Chia, who is competing at the 2023 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games Men’s 800m event, echoed the financial plight of athletes. While the 24-year-old acknowledged that Singapore has financial support schemes for athletes such as the High-Performance Sports system, Chia also noted access to such comprehensive support is limited to only the most high-performing athletes. 
 
“If I feel that excelling in sports will not be able to provide for me in the long term, I think it is understandable if I find a more stable career,” the Singapore Institute of Technology undergraduate said. 
 
Full-time training and a financially stable career need not be mutually exclusive, however. 
 
This is the belief of Fabian William, 44, an ex-national athlete, and founder of Fabian Williams Coaching Concepts, where he is also a coach. To him, companies and athletes should negotiate work arrangements that can accommodate the athlete’s training programme. 
 
One company, Deloitte, has adopted this solution. Deloitte Ignite is a scheme that allows current and retired athletes to have flexible work arrangements, providing them with the ability to balance their career and sporting pursuits. 
 
Furthermore, such a programme can benefit companies as well, William said.
 
“Why do I say go and invest in an athlete? Because he will get the job done faster; because he or she has other priorities on the table — which is training,” he added. 
 
“And we should embrace that and accept that.” 
 
For national distance runner Toh Ting Xuan, 22, this is a mindset she already adopts while juggling her training and school work as a final-year undergraduate at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
 
“When you’re working, then you stay focused and you get your work done. And then when you’re training, you stay focused on your training and get your training done,” said Toh, who is competing at the 2023 SEA Games Women’s 10000m event.
 
Even if national athletes were given more leeway to work and train at the same time, however, they face other issues that could hinder their careers.
 
For example, there is no dedicated national coach for Singapore’s mid and long-distance running team. With no structured programs for them, it makes it difficult to find a reason to stay in the team, Sivarajan said. 
 
Yet, apart from the athletes, coaches also receive little support in their careers. It is common practice for coaches to take on multiple jobs, especially from schools, at any one time to support themselves.
 
“Now, one coach will probably have two, maybe three schools. He’s running around schools because they don’t pay sufficiently enough for a coach to be financially stable,” said William, who himself coaches the distance teams at three schools.
 
This means that coaches have less time and energy to focus on the development of each athlete, which limits the performance of the athletics scene.
 
In addition, between the coaches in Singapore, there needs to be greater collaboration and knowledge transfer for the athletics scene to improve. This was former Singapore Athletics technical director Volker Herrmann’s sentiments in an interview with The New Paper in 2017. 
 
“Many of the coaches are not willing to share because it's very territorial,” William said, adding that coaches need to swallow their pride to know that they have weaknesses and ask for help. 
 
However, there are coaches who guard their knowledge tightly, and fear that sharing might cost them their competitive edge against others. This cut-throat environment can prevent effective coaching. As such, this may inadvertently worsen the relationship between coaches and their athletes, which was pointed out by Sport Singapore in training materials for the Identify and Understand e-workshop. 
 
Strong relationships are crucial for aspects such as performance and the longevity of an athlete’s sports career. This was the case for Toh who recounted her experience finding a team while in university. She did not train with the NUS team, citing a mismatch of expectations and needs between her and the coach. 
 
“I was trying to find a training team that I can feel happy training with,” Toh said, adding that this gives her more motivation during training. She has since decided to train with Lacticbuds athletics club. 
 
In general, however, local athletes lack the hunger to aim high, William said. He believes that some athletes can be too comfortable with their achievements. Unlike athletes from developing countries, where victories can be means to bring food to the table for a family, Singapore athletes have to find something within them that drives them further, he added.
 
Furthermore, to many Singaporeans, genetics is a factor behind our lacklustre performance on the international stage. However, William and Sivarajan do not believe it is the reason for our poor performance. Singaporeans should not assume that Asians will never perform better than athletes from countries that conventionally dominate the athletics scene.
 
At the 2022 World Athletics Championships, Japan was represented at every mid- and long-distance women’s event and every long-distance men’s event. India was also represented at the 3000m steeplechase men’s event, while Sri Lanka was represented at the 800m women’s event and 3000m steeplechase women’s event. 
 
The scientific community has not agreed as to how much of a role genetics plays in determining high sports performance compared to training — some put them as equals, while some prioritise one over the other. 
 
Unfortunately, Singapore’s education system lags behind other Asian countries in priming our youth for sports. 
 
In a study conducted locally in 2017, researchers found that Singapore children aged six to nine years old lack any fundamental motor skills. Specifically, for the “object control” component, most of the children tested attained “below average”, “poor” and “very poor”. In contrast, Hong Kong children tested in a separate study in 2009 mostly attained “average” and “above average”. Evidently, Singapore’s physical education curriculum is unable to equip our children with skills that are necessary for sports. 
 
At its core, the athletics system in Singapore is inept at supporting our athletes for success on the international stage. As such, many promising athletes leave the scene before even maximising their potential, stunting the growth of Singapore’s athletics standards. 
 
“I feel we need to find ways to entice younger athletes to stay in the sport longer, at the very least past 20 years old,” Chia said, adding that identifying talent early is also crucial. 
 
Hence, if Singapore wants to succeed on the international stage, more has to be done for our athletes. 
 
“I still believe that there is always talent [in Singapore]. It just has to be tapped and utilised properly,” Sivarajan said.