Pressure is on for judoka Wee

SINGAPORE — Two minutes was all it took for Singapore national judoka Wee Pui Seng to take down team-mate and 2013 SEA Games judo champion Ho Han Boon in the men’s over 100kg class in February to book his spot at next month’s Games that the Republic will host.

The victory meant Ho — who broke Singapore judo’s 24-year gold medal duck in Myanmar two years ago — will be left to watch the action here as a spectator because each nation is allowed to enter only one judoka in each weight class.

But Wee’s superiority did not come as a surprise since he has beaten the 205kg Ho in the four times they met since 2009. The 29-year-old made his games debut in 2003, and is competing in the over 100kg for the first time, after upping his weight to 115kg.

After missing the previous two editions because of his work in Japan, Wee is making a comeback to the Games and will be part of the six men and four women judoka squad hunting for at least five medals when competition for the sport begins on June 6 at the Singapore Expo.

He won bronze and silver at the 2003 and 2009 Games respectively in the below 100kg division. Now that he has now earned the right over Ho to fly the nation’s flag, Wee is expected to deliver gold.

“At every SEA Games, I’ve always aimed to be champion,” Wee told TODAY at the Raffles Institution gymnasium where the team are undergoing centralised training. “But as Han Boon has delivered in this weight category, there will be people who would say he should have been chosen, if things don’t go well for me.

“I was confident of earning the Games spot, but each time I fought Han Boon, I felt he got stronger and stronger. He is big, but weight comes at the expense of stamina, agility and speed.”

Wee’s journey to the judoka national squad came by accident.

Softball was his first love and when he started Secondary 1 at the Chinese High School, he was eyed not only by the softball team there but by the judokas as well.

As judo was one of Chinese High’s “core sports”, the sport was given priority over him.

But Wee tried to resist and asked his parents to meet the school dean to get him out of judo. They were told that, if the young boy did not want to give it a try, they should “consider finding him another school”.

“In the first month, I skipped training a lot and it prompted the teacher-in-charge (TIC) of judo to tell the softball team not to let me join their trainings. In the course of three months, I slowly began to like judo and did not want to leave, but was embarrassed to let the TIC know this, especially after I had done everything not to take it up.”

Heading to his fifth SEA Games as a veteran and the oldest in the squad, Wee will be looked up to by his five teammates who are making their debut at the biennial event, especially 19-year-old Walter Soh, Soo Qin Qi,27, Lee You Ren, 18, Tania Forichon, 19, and Tan Yee Chin, 23.

Soh has a clutch of gold medals from local and regional competitions, including victories at the 2010 Hong Kong Youth and Junior, and the 2013 Jakarta Judo competitions, but he believes the SEA Games will launch his sporting career.

Like Wee, he was recruited into the sport in Secondary 1 at St Gabriel’s Secondary School and was not keen on it. “I took up judo when I was 10 at a private club, because I thought I was very skinny and small-sized,” said the final-year Republic Poly student.

“My dad wanted me to learn some self-defence but because of my size, I ended up getting beaten real bad during training. I began to develop some kind of hatred for the senior judokas. As I hated being thrown around like a rag doll, (I) began to really train hard.

“It is crazy how far I’ve come, and I want to go to the Olympics in 2016, if not, in 2020. I am just hoping the 2015 SEA Games will be the springboard to that dream.”w