Our formula to success: Importing foreign talents?

As you probably know already, the Singapore team has managed to create a historic moment in the Olympic Games yesterday when the women's table tennis team defeated the team from South Korea to progress to the final and at the same time, ensuring that the team will at least win the Silver medal, which is also the first Olympic medal for the country since 48 years ago, when Tan Howe Liang became the first Singaporean to win an Olympic medal in the Rome Olympics. There is no doubt that they have done the country proud but the question that still remain in everyone's mind is whether they are truly representing the country or are they just doing themselves proud? This is due to the fact that they are not naturally born Singaporean.

I think everyone knows that there are many foreign born athletes in the country today that are representing the country in the major sporting event such as the SEA Games or the Olympic Games. These are the players under the “Foreign Talent Scheme”. The scheme was first launched in 1993 by the Singapore Sports Council and even though it has been in place for more than a decade, it’s still a perennial issue that remains unresolved. When our athletes are competing, they represent Singapore but there are still some people who are unhappy because they are not born here, even though they are doing the country proud and they usually perform much better than our local athletes. Lets take the case of the women table tennis for example. Every single one of them is from China, even the coach but they have represent the country over many years now and have done us proud on many occassions. The current success in the Olympic Games is probably their best achievement up to date. You would expect that most Singaporeans would share their joy for ending the nation dream of another Olympic medal but that is not what I am hearing. Most of them are upset at the fact that they are not pure Singaporean and are saying that the final match would be a China v China B team and their success doesnt mean much to them. Even during the semi-final match between South Korea, I noticed that there was more support for the Singapore team from the crowd, which is mostly Chinese, it felt like they were treating them as one of their own.

For me personally though, I view them as part of the country, they might not born in Singapore but they are citizens of the country now and Im sure when they represent the country, they are not just doing for themselves but for the country as well. Its like watching a parent supporting their adopted child in a sporting event, its the same feeling for me. I dont think it is about the money or wanting to prove to their own country that they were wrong to deny them the opportunity to represent their country, but instead wanting to make our country proud. Singapore gives them training, opportunities, citizenship, etc, and they help raise the standard of local players and perform for us in the international arena but at what expense? By importing foreign talents, are we depriving the opportunity for our local born athletes to shine as well? Why is it always the foreign born athletes that are always doing better than our native born athletes? Are we focusing more on having instant success that we dont really care at the development of our own athletes or are our native born athletes to blame because they dont have the heart to do well for the country? I would love to see a pure Singapore winning an Olympic medal, but Im not sure when the time will come. Do you know that even our first Olympic winner is not born in Singapore? He was born in China too.

The Government has introduced some new measures to improve the quality of our local athletes though such as the setting up of the Sport School, increased emphasis of sports in education, holding of international sports events, and a great part of the budget used to promote it. All of these measures is aim at having lower dependency on foreign talents. Nevertheless, I think that the Foreign Talent Scheme will continue to be an integral part of our sports system here especially when we have a population of only about 4 million people. You might want to know that we are not the only country in the world to import foreign talents. The USA for example has about 30 foreign talents representing them in the Olympics and Canada has about 50 foreign talents. The only difference about them is that their native born athletes are winning medals as well and they are not just depending the foreign born athletes to do well. You could of course argue that their population is much more bigger than us, so it is not fair to compare with them and I agree. But when I see lesser-known countries such as Zimbabwe or Mongolia having won some medals already, I wonder why we havnt, until yesterday news of course. I mean given the resource that we have, we should probably be doing much better than those countries. I think what we can do in the future is to focus on sports that we have a better chance of winning a medal, instead of wasting our time and money on a far more difficult sports such as swimming.

In conclusion though, I dont mind having the foreign born athletes representing our country. I dont know what they really think of representing a country which they are not born from, but as long as they wear the shirt that has the Singapore flag on it and make us proud, then I would be content. I dont understand why some people are blaming them for doing well for the country just because they are not born here. I mean they have sacrificed a lot for our country and it is only right that we give them our support. Im not saying though that all of them has been a success because some of them, I wont mention their names, have been a huge disappointment. I am still hoping to see the day when one of our own born and breed in Singapore athlete finally bring glory to the country in an Olympic Game though. At the end of the day, the underlying truth is that we need to help of our foreign talents if we are going to have any chance of winning any medal on the big stage because right now, I dont see any of our born in Singapore athlete doing that which is sad when you compare to some of our neighbouring country such as Malaysia. I think they have some foreign talents representing them in the Games but at least their own Lee Chong Wei has made it to the Badminton men's final.

The good thing about all of this is that when I hear Singaporeans complaining about foreign talents, at least I know they have a sense of national identity and pride for the country. They have an idea of what Singapore means to them. It also shows that they have a sense of belonging to Singapore and they wish to see our country doing well in everything. The bottomline is that if you cant prevent the foreign talents from coming in, then it would be better if we support them instead. Share me your views on this issue. Do you think foreign talents are necessary? Do they bring any benefit or are they detrimental to the development of our local born athletes? or is it because the country just want to have instant success without working hard for it? Tell me. But for now, I am still hoping for the best for the table tennis in the final more so because I love Li Jiawei and Feng Tianwei.