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Friday, Aug 03, 2012 - 01:29 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Olympic Musings


For Woman Of Bronze, Now We Always Use Instead

Yea for these, our sterling pieces, all of pure Athenian mould/
All of perfect die and metal, all the fairest of the fair/
All of workmanship unequalled, proved and valued everywhere/
These we use not...

- The Frogs, Aristophanes


Four years have passed in a flash (where did they go?), and Singapore's finally got a second individual medal after a long, long wait. Since our representative seems a fine young lady by all appearances, it is with some contrition that I have to admit that I didn't feel quite as ecstatic as I probably should have been at the news, but that's just how it is.

Much has remained unchanged since my blog post in 2008, including the makeup of the national table-tennis side, which might slightly uncomfortably be seen as a metaphor for life in general here. Yes, some might quite fairly ask, am I xenophobic? She's a Singaporean now! Why aren't you unreservedly proud of her achievements?

Well, much of it is due to the entire process being too... coldly calculative. It is one thing if a new citizen comes over as a child and then develops into a world-beater, or of her own accord due to belief in the nation's ideals, and quite another to actively scout for proven talent, particularly in sporting matters, which to me sort of defeats the entire point. I mean, if a private professional club side wants to do so, fair enough, but a national team? Why not try to convert a famous overseas singer to perform the national anthem?

Actually, by itself, this still isn't that bad - the bigger problem to me is that the entire squad is made up of imported players, which does not quite mesh with the purported objective of "boosting local sporting standards by importing sporting expertise". I gather that some opinions may have been swayed if Feng and company had partnered a native-born local to doubles glory, which would have been far more in keeping with both stated objective and social compact; sadly, the vibe given off has become one of "replacement" instead of "synergy", precisely mirroring wider concerns on the ground.


Those were the days my friend
(Source: theonlinecitizen.com)


Take the Singapore Lions Dream Team circa 1994 as an example - one would be hard-pressed to find even the most nationalistic fan griping at having foreigners like Abbas Saad, Jang Jung and Alistair Edwards in the team, chiefly because they were clearly here to supplement the local core of Fandi, Sundram, Malek, Tong Hai, David Lee etc, instead of supplanting them. Now close your eyes and imagine that the Dream Team were wholly composed of foreign and/or newly-naturalised-for-the-purpose-of-winning-trophies citizens. Would it have garnered anywhere near the outpouring of genuine unitive support that it enjoyed? Thought not.

This is precisely why the blanket accusation of xenophobia levelled at dissenters to the government's liberal immigration policies particularly stings; in what other place would objection to the non-citizen population doubling in a decade - and from a goodly percentage to begin with, mind - be denigrated so out of hand? Beneath all the discontent is the very real fear of becoming a stranger in a once-familiar but now-strange land.

Using another analogy:

A man in a southern province of China had just taken a wife, and was about to merrily go about baby-making when the clan headman pulled him aside. "Hey, I've got a brother who wants to move here. Mind putting him up in your house for a bit?"

Being a nice fellow at heart, the man agreed freely enough, and the new arrival for his part was cordial enough too - the two got on fairly well in a mutually beneficial arrangement, and were fast becoming great friends, when the headman asked if his two nephews could bunk in too.

Now the man had no spare rooms left, but he was a kind man, and so he acquiesced. The nephews turned out to have more in common with the brother than with him, and he felt a bit left out sometimes, but he didn't mind too much - they were all family in the end, right?

Then the headman's second cousins twice-removed came, and the man felt slightly pressed for space, but he was up to the sacrifice. But next was a distant uncle's extended family, and then a bunch of friends. The man now had people barging into his corner of the house every night, and although he did collect some rent, for many of the newcomers were gainfully employed with the headman after all, he was beginning to feel that the whole arrangement was not quite worth it.

Finally, the man could not stand it any longer, and when the headman next came with more new tenants, he piped up. "Sir, I want to start a family, but it's just too crowded and I simply can't get into the mood with my wife. Also, the rooms which I had built in preparation for my children have long been occupied. Could you please stop assigning more people to my home?"

But the headman said: "Ungrateful man, why are you against your own kin? Well, if you are not going to have kids, it is your own business, you better not try to push any of the blame to me, and don't expect me to help you out there. I will just ask my friends to send their children over too. It's all the same to me, honestly."



This is of course not to say that citizens should not be gracious towards newcomers, but I believe that the authorities should do their part too in not trying to force the issue, and make some bold decisions for once.


Yet To Mend Your Ways Begin

It's mostly been the same old, same old - guts, glory, plain old mess-ups, umpire-bashing, the odd disgruntled athlete staging a sit-in... but now, there's also some pretty bad acting:


(Source: businessinsider.com)


Okay, that's perhaps unfair - they were skilled enough to consistently miss by a teeny bit - but it was still pretty obvious what was going on, after awhile. Due to the way that the tournament was set up, and an earlier shock result, losing would have been more helpful to both sides, as it would enable them to avoid meeting a stronger opponent in the knockout stages.

One might sympathize slightly with the players, who might well have been forced by their entire sporting establishment (which frankly is not new from tournament histories), had one of them not had the gall to further blame the officials for "heartlessly shattering their dreams".

If there's any consolation, it is that badminton is hardly alone in these manipulations. In football, the 1982 Anschluss between West Germany and Austria finally forced FIFA to schedule the final matches in World Cup group stages to end simultaneously, which however didn't stop the Swedes and Danes from doing a Scandinavian job on Italy in Euro 2004.

They were both positively subtle at it, though, compared to what happened in the 1998 Tiger Cup, which saw Thailand and Indonesia both trying hard to lose and get Singapore as their semi-final opponents, which was certainly not complimentary to the Lions. Indonesia managed it, but only after resorting to a deliberate own goal, and Singapore had the last laugh by defeating them en route to ultimate victory. But even that was tame compared to the 1994 Caribbean Cup, which had Barbados defending both goals at one stage due to a quirk in the rules, thankfully never repeated thus far.

There is a grey area as regards to fielding a weakened team, especially when a club has bigger fish to fry. On to other sports, it was beneficial in the NBA (and probably other leagues with drafts) for a poor team to throw its final games to guarantee a top draft pick, for racers to obey illegal team orders, for sumo wrestlers to fix rankings, for golfers to sandbag their handicaps, for pool hustlers to disguise their skill... the list goes on and on.

Wherever there is a system in place, it will be gamed, and this is certainly not limited to sports. For example, it is sometimes wholly rational to refuse a raise - or even to work - if that would mean reduced benefits (which might be prevented by the interesting if impractical negative income tax system). A salient example here would be the income ceiling for a "subsidized" HDB flat, only recently raised to S$10000.

But back to the original topic - is there a way out? I would say yes, and it is not even that complicated. Each team qualifying for the knockout stages would be asked to submit a list of opponents in order of preference, which are then honoured according to their round-robin performance. There would then never be a case when finishing higher is detrimental, and there is an added spicy dimension in that participants could call out opponents, in the manner of ancient generals, who are not objectively the worst available but whose style they think themselves best equipped to tackle.

So, it's basically our secondary/tertiary education placement scheme; but it has worked, hasn't it?



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