Singapore athletes shone at the Asian Games. So let’s tell them we care by celebrating them

When a fellow reporter told me about the small crowd at Changi Airport to receive Shanti Pereira, I was frankly dismayed. Joseph Schooling got a deserved bus ride across town for his Olympic gold. Pereira, with Asian Games gold and silver medals in her pocket, at least warranted a welcoming band playing Unstoppable, or Brave.

I know we’re all preoccupied with LeBron James’ new team and Nations League action but if you truly love sport and, hell, even if you don’t, just find a way to pay respect to Singapore’s athletes who’ve done some seriously impressive stuff at the Asian Games in spikes, with swords, in water and on courts.

It’s not about awards, grand dinners and sponsorships (though that will do nicely). It’s about the small things one citizen does for another. So take a minute to write a paean to MMA gold medallist Tiffany Teo on Instagram. Go on, just try. Or journey to the airport and wave a flag when golfer Shannon Tan next returns home. She’ll love it, I promise. Or check where the fencers are competing next and follow their progress on your phone. It’s easy, really.

I’m thrilled The Straits Times often puts local athletes on the front page during the Games because they deserve to be celebrated. In a grim world which weighs us down, they get us to our feet and give us a little swagger. Most days we’re buried under invasions and oil prices, AI’s sly march and job losses, and so the sight of a fellow citizen expressing her bravery in a pool is like sunlight piercing a fog.

At the 2024 Olympics, Asia held three of the top eight slots on the medal table. Sportingly we’re no slouch. In swimming in Paris, the continent won 16 medals, yet it’s among this talent that Singapore’s Gan Ching Hwee seized three silvers at this Asiad. In the 400m, 800m and 1,500m freestyle she set national records and every timing was its own statement: You better go fast because I’m going to go faster than I’ve been before.

We should celebrate Gan – and the others – not just because of the day she stood on the podium but also because of the days she fought to get there. We’re acknowledging a journey more than a race. We’re saluting a wonderfully lunatic life of defeat, frustration, dedication, fear, obstinacy. We’re grateful, too, for the dreams they have planted.

When we’re sipping a latte, Gan’s hurtling through water and declaring a war on pain. What she does, it hurts, always, but as she once said, “I’ve been there before. My body has been through that pain. You have to talk yourself through it.”

So let’s at least follow her on Instagram, or give badminton’s Loh Kean Yew another cheer, or invite bronze medal-winning windsurfer John Wong to our schools, or be able to recognise Ian Goh, 16 and a silver medallist in sailing, as he walks past you in a mall. Hold out your hand. Say thanks. It’s enough. Or write a column as physician-poet Faye Ng Yu Ci did about Teo, 36, and passions found later in life.

This is not about building heroes, it’s about commending the efforts of Kiria Tikanah (a first fencing silver for Singapore) and Maxine Wong (a first fencing bronze for her), about knowing their names, and mentioning them to friends, and being able to tell the difference between an epee, foil and sabre.

To celebrate is to accord respect and we do this by just talking about athletes in social settings or sharing videos of their skills on WhatsApp. A professor I know, a wonderful sports fan, joyously sent me a video early in the morning of Sept 27 of Pereira winning the 200m. But the race was in fact only that same evening and the video he sent was of her victory at the 2023 Asian Games.

I grinned. His dates were wrong but his heart was in the right place.

These stories from Nagoya are worth celebrating because they’re of gifted humans who live among us, who in the worst of times are always exploring the best of themselves. Stories which enrich us and ask for so little in return. Like tipping our hat to taekwondo bronze medallist Darren Yap by just knowing what poomsae is. In short, “a choreographed sequence of defence and attack movements against imaginary opponents”.

The most compelling Asian story of recent times has been the embrace between Filipinos and Alexandra Eala. She plays, they go. Eventually love of any kind requires effort. I know Singaporeans care deeply for Pereira, and she knows it too, but perhaps it requires demonstration.

Like the 72-year-old stranger my colleague told me about who was there when Pereira arrived back in Singapore. Who initially went to one terminal to greet her, and then another when it was changed, but was there for her, carrying a scarf which she later posed with, on which was written a word which connected her and him.