Films, and such.

The steady state of disorder

Been watching a lot of South-east Asian Games action over the past few days. It's been the same old story for Singapore, a mixture of the good and bad.

Swimming has been phenomenal, as usual. Something like 14 golds and a clutch of other medals. It's been great to see really young talent coming through and doing well, given that there's a couple of kids around 15 years old.

Sadly though, too much of the attention has been focused on the swimming success. The Singapore media and Singaporeans in general love winners, so i guess it should come as no surprise that almost all the coverage has been focused on our gold medal winners. Furthermore, the swimmers are photogenic, which helps when selling sports to the public. In fact, it almost sounds as though Mark Richmond has a crush on Quah Tingwen. Anyway, we failed to notice the athletes who have done well to earn minor medals, despite lacking the funding that swimming has received. We won a bronze in cycling, which was a great achievement, given that competitive cycling has been almost non-existent in Singapore and Singapore lacks the necessary terrain. The media could've used the bronze to encourage the growing cycling community to dream of getting more medals in the future games. Other sports like wushu got a single picture and short mention despite winning gold.

The success of swimming only makes the failure of athletics look even worse. There is little reason for athletics not to do well. Swimming is no less dependent on physique than track and field is. Both are exposed to the same recruiting opportunities, in terms of spotting new talents and developing them (arguably track gets even more - every school has a cross-country day, but not a swimming meet). Army disrupts both equally.

I think it's pretty obvious what differs is the mindset of the associations. Whereas swimming has been forward looking, athletics has been found desperately wanting. From the papers there has been a groundswell of discontent amongst the members and athletes of the association with the head of the administration. I only hope things get better in the long run.