Foreign-born sports recruits: Honour and glory more theirs than Singapore’s

In the report “Despite string of successes, foreign talent issue dogs Lee Bee Wah” (Aug 16), Ms Lee said: “If we had fielded (Isabelle Li) and lost the gold medal, do you think no one will criticise us?”

I myself would not have criticised such a decision. A Singapore that produces winning sportsmen and a Singapore that recruits winning sportsmen are two different things.

Contrary to what the writer expressed in “S’pore on the right track to sporting success with foreign-born players” (Aug 16), having Singapore on the world stage is not an end to be achieved by any means.

Whether there is honour and glory in a gold medal depends on more than the medal itself.

Foreign-born members of the women’s table tennis team can be respected as sportspeople who trained and competed hard, emerging eventually as winners.

The honour and glory, though, is more theirs than Singapore’s.

I am happy that Ms Lee has worked to put a pipeline in place to train young players for the future. A worthwhile objective takes time and the fruit is sweet because of that and the labour invested to do it right.

We can thank our foreign-born sports recruits for helping to set the standard our locals should aim for and exceed. Indeed, that is a catalyst to raise our standards to a global level.

But we cannot depend on these recruits to be the ones upholding the standards and therefore say that Singapore has arrived.