Seow wins vote of fencing fraternity for third term

SINGAPORE – Just a month after presiding over a fruitful outing at the Kuala Lumpur SEA Games, where they won two gold and three bronze medals, Fencing Singapore’s (FS) president Juliana Seow scored yet another significant victory on Tuesday night (Sept 26).

This time however, her success came during the association’s elections at their annual general meeting (AGM), as the 45-year-old successfully fended off the challenge of ex-FS chief Adrian Lee to retain her presidency.

Seow, an entrepreneur, was handed the mandate to lead FS once again after garnering the majority of the 19.5 votes at the election against Lee, who had served as president from 2005 to 2009.

A total of 13 affiliates out of the 15 eligible had attended Tuesday’s AGM, and participated in the elections.

The victory means Seow will now embark on her third two-year term as FS president, having first assumed the role in 2013 after a successful challenge against then-president Nicholas Fang.

Speaking to the media after the elections, Seow, a former national sabre fencer, was keen to downplay the significance of her re-election, and instead chose to emphasise on the importance of building the sport “as a community”.

“Fencers are the focus of what the national sports association does and whatever happens in the AGM is irrelevant, as the whole fencing community will work together to improve the sport,” she said.

“We’ve built a skeleton of the multi-year sports plan, and we’ve shared it with the whole community through a series of workshops. But whatever we do, we want to be inclusive, we want to engage everyone (in the community), and we want to work together.”

Lee, who had assembled a team of five – including former president Fang, recently retired national fencer Wang Wenying, national fencer Tan Yuan Zi, and director of Modern Fencing Sports Club Dmitry Ivanov – was not present at the elections as he was overseas.

Fang, who led FS from 2009 to 2013, had contested for all three available vice-presidents (VP) positions (High Performance, High Participation, and Industry Development), but was unsuccessful in each of his bids.

Instead, it was Yau Wee Sian, Ang Ker Wee and Ng Hock Sing who were respectively elected as the VPs of High Performance, High Participation, and Industry Development.

The other members of Lee’s team – Wang, Ivanov and Tan – along with three other candidates in James Wong, Gabriel Soh and Eugene Chua also failed in their respective election bids.

The three new faces in the 10-strong exco are Ng, Lim Swee Kim, who was elected unopposed to the role of treasurer, and David Chan, who beat three others to the position of member (high performance).

With the elections over, Seow said the new exco will now get down to work in their bid to help the sport progress even further.

Among their key objectives for the coming term will be to develop a viable Olympic pathway for their athletes, particularly for the 2020 and 2024 Games.

Yau, who will be spearheading FS’s Olympic pathway programme, said: “It is part of the multi-year strategic plan to have Olympic-ready fencers by 2020. We’ve been working with Sport Singapore (SportSG) and the Singapore Sports Institute (SSI) for the last year, and with the exco now in place, it allows us to take things forward in the coming two months, where we tie up the loose ends and bring it all together.

“One of the five key strategies that we have is definitely the Olympic pathway…we have a very good pipeline of fencers, and with every Olympic cycle, we should have more fencers coming through. At the end of the day, we depend on them to inspire the rest of the community, so we hope to get them going in their journey.”

Fencing Singapore executive committee:

President: Juliana Seow


Vice-president (High performance): Yau Wee Sian


Vice-president (High participation): Kelvin Ang Ker Wee


Vice-president (Industry development): Ng Hock Sing


Secretary-general: Francis Kwong


Treasurer: Lim Swee Kim


Assistant treasurer: Joseph Yeo


Member (High performance): David Chan


Member (High participation): Dennis Leong


Member (Industry development): Koh Li-Chieh