Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s coincided with the start of academic pressure for students in Singapore; the country’s development at the time meant a push for more graduates.
My generation was probably the first to face high expectations in school, turning to private tuition to achieve good grades.
Both my parents worked in hotels; my father as a restaurant captain and my mother as a housekeeper. They had both started from the lowest ranks and drew wages that barely met the upkeep of our two-room HDB flat and expenses for my sister and me.
Yet, we were sent to art classes, had a private tutor, a swimming coach and sometimes, even Sunday breakfasts at McDonald’s. What I didn’t know then was that there were several occasions where my family came close to having our electricity supply cut because my parents couldn’t pay the bills.
One of my more significant memories of sport was of our family trips to East Coast Park. Every other weekend, my mother would bring my sister and me, along with her brother’s family, to ride hired bicycles, followed by a meal at the hawker centre or McDonald’s. Now that I am a triathlete with some podium glory, I have those weekends my mother had organised to thank for my love of sport.
Not hard to get into, but hard to stay in
Elite sport may seem hard to get into. You need to spend years practising and you need to be talented, it would seem. I remember sitting in a local coffee shop with the extended family during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The women’s weightlifting competition was on screen. We saw women from many countries who had huge, heavyset muscles lifting weights that might have been double or triple my body weight. A cousin commented, “See, see, where are the Singaporeans?” Followed very quickly with, “Why Singapore never takes part in this?” Without thinking, my blunt response to him was, “Well, it’s because we are all here at the kopitiam sitting on our big fat bottoms drinking coffee.”
But elite sport isn’t hard to get into. Many of the athletes from some of the less developed countries have little support and few opportunities. What sets them apart is this: hunger. You hear stories of athletes winning medals at the Olympics or at major games where prize monies are substantial; some of these athletes literally race in order to feed their hunger-stricken village.
In Singapore, elite sport is uncommon for now. But we must not mistake rarity for exclusivity.
When I was in secondary school, I trained with a tennis coach who I would describe as hardline. Mr Quah Siew Kow, knowing that I had played for the school team for three years, invited me to train at the Head Tennis School, where he was a private coach. That was a stepping-stone that got me into the world of competitive sport. It was expensive but my mother supported it for two months before she could no longer afford it, and I had to withdraw from the tennis school. Coming from a low-income family, the fact that I got into that tennis school, meant that high-level sport was not hard to get into. It was simply hard to keep going. For me, it was my family’s disposable income that interfered with my sporting pursuit, but I would imagine that fellow Singaporeans faced similar factors steeped in the issue of stretching every dollar.
Money, time and resources
An aunt said to me some weeks ago that nothing is impossible if one has the time and the desire. She said it in reference to the amazing productive garden that she had built over decades. At 36, I realise that to achieve my goals I must make time and I must want to achieve those goals.
Even though we are an affluent country with world-class sports facilities, Singapore sport faces similar issues that are governed by laws of nature and society. Singaporean sportspeople can have tremendous success on the global stage in the next 50 years, but only if we make time and want it enough.
High-pressure, fast-paced Singapore has a unique problem of affluence coupled with enormous pressure to perform. Our average household is better off than those in neighbouring countries. We aren’t lazy; if you go by the number of hours we work a week. However, what trip us up are the priorities we set for ourselves based on society’s expectations.
I consider myself lucky because my mother focused on values over education. I am determined and resourceful, second to being compassionate and others-centred. Many friends who had spent unrecoverable hours studying and stressing about how much they still had to revise are, today, trapped in the corporate hamster wheel, expending precious energy on work over and above the work’s requirement. While we take pride in how efficient and hardworking we are, we know that energy is a finite resource; we cannot create new energy, we can only conserve by giving up on activities that suck up that precious energy. It makes little sense that we work 45-60 hours a week in order to discover that we are overworked, fatigued and have poor walking tolerance to enjoy our two-week holiday to exotic locations every year.
Sport is a jealous mistress, but it is a necessary preoccupation, even a rewarding one. I think most Singaporeans would agree that work and financial stability must come before recreation, but my “almost sporty” mother would argue, and has shown with much success, that recreation is as important. Elite sport will not exist without us building foundational skills through recreation.
In line with this argument, it lies on the government to support Singaporeans’ pursuit of quality recreation as a family or as a social group, by creating opportunities so that time can be made to play sport. Companies could amend policies regarding work hours; schools could mandate compulsory and fun physical education or sports participation; parents could make sport and physical activities part of family time. Children need to appreciate sport as a worthy recreation and therefore, the importance to desiring sports excellence as individuals.
Imagine going out for a game of sports because we feel good moving gracefully, unimpeded and powerful. Now, imagine this place to be the park just down the road from your flat, where age, gender, race and language hold no relevance. Excellence will have its birth there, for the boy who has 10 dollars in his pockets but also for the girl who has only two, because their families are supported by the government, albeit differently. Can we create more pathways and opportunities for sport in our daily lives?
Making a comeback
My involvement in triathlons began when I was 27 and despite podium successes, my claim to fame was in my comeback from a horrific near-fatal motor vehicle accident in 2011, four months before my 32nd birthday
I spent three months in hospital and a further seven in a wheelchair. When I was finally allowed to stand and try walking, I signed up for a marathon to help me close that chapter. Across a two-page spread, my experience was the first sport-related article to have made the front page of The Straits Times, entitled “True Grit”. It was a moving piece written by U-Gene Chan, a journalist who obviously felt the depths of my trauma but also the breadth of my sport-ingrained resilience. More sports and sportspeople need to feature on front-page news. Not just to inspire resilience, but also to celebrate achievement, inspire interest and create greater awareness in this aspect of a balanced developed society, and by that extension, of well-rounded individuals.
People matter
If you aspire towards sporting success, hang around successful athletes. I have had the privilege of knowing several high performing triathletes, and being able to pick their brains about training and racing was invaluable. They were, and still are my role models and my mentors — people I look up to and model after. Singapore sports would do well with a supportive sport environment where older or higher-level athletes mentor the younger generation.
I think back to my late tennis coach, Mr Quah, who had, and still has a tremendous influence on how I approach sports and training. It was 20 years ago that he taught me discipline and helped me develop a mental toughness that would take an army to crush. Today, I compete in international races with the same hard-line approach.
Coaches and sport science have come a long way in the fields of physical education, and recreational and elite sports. Having had different coaches, completed a sport science degree, practised as an exercise physiologist and now, doing a PhD in sports psychology, I have experienced sport at various levels and in different capacities – training for performance, studying physiology, and coaching – and I am now being waist-deep exploring the psychosocial aspects of sports. From what I have seen over the years as an athlete, academic and coach, different professionals have their respective, and respectable, places in providing positive and successful sporting endeavours.
I hope to see a strong and extensive base of passionate coaches who will be amongst the first professionals an athlete would encounter. Next I would like to see physiology and psychology applied to meet the different needs of the Singaporean student athlete, the working recreational athlete, the semi-professional and the elite professional athlete. We need to make the distinction between these groups because they all have different developmental and psychosocial needs.
I hope that Singapore will continue to build traction from the recent Olympic and SEA Games successes. But even as Singapore continues to develop its sport infrastructure and refine its athlete pathways, I hope that Singaporeans do not forget the critical roles played by the local park or playground, nor the Mr Quahs who are the bridges to competitive sport, nor the friendships derived from sport. They deserve time, respect and camaraderie, respectively.
While we may not have the same degree of success compared to other countries, I hope that we will develop a more holistic perspective of sport. I hope we pursue sport because it is an activity that allows us to express ourselves truly and wholly. Sport, in its purest form, is an expression of us as individuals, as a group and as an extension of the place we call our home.
Kirsten Koh has been an athlete from when she started walking. She is a former podium-placing triathlete who survived a near-fatal accident and is now a coach with research interests in sport psychology.
Kirsten is also featured on The Future of Us Ideas Bank Page (Dreamers)
Top photo from Life By Accident Facebook page