Foreign sport talent imports don’t work!

‏Related links:

• The Flawed Foreign Sports Talent Scheme

• Flawed Foreign Sports Talent scheme Part2

•  We import foreign athletes? Hells yeah

• No pride in 76% of medals won by foreign-born athletes

• Lee Bee Wah quits because of foreign talent issues

• Despite string of successes, foreign talent issue dogs Lee Bee Wah

Eight times Australian National Champion and Commonwealth Games Men’s Singles silver medalist (2006), William Henzell, lambasted Singapore for sending a “professional team” – the politically correct descriptive for “mercenary” – to Glasgow that was largely made up of PRC-born players. “I don’t think hat Singapore does is in the spirit of the Games.”

Singapore just won’t 6 table tennis golds from the Commonwealth game though China imports, no excitement, no pride. But when a relatively unknown local born badminton player won the badminton Silver unexpectedly, especially after a hard fought final and lose marginally, the response was overwhelming. It says a lot to the politicians: pay more attention to groom our people, do not take short cut in grooming talents. Singapore people are not so naive and there is no pride in winning gold by importing.

“Out of these 38 medals, 29 medals were won by foreign-born Singaporeans from different countries.  This means Singapore-born athletes won only 9 medals.”

“The worst case would definitely be when a foreign-born athlete fails to integrate into our society, then packs up and leaves when his or her sporting days are over. If you want to buy in to Singapore, you have to buy in to the whole package.”

“But (the coach) said Isabelle wasn’t ready. If we had fielded her and lost the gold medal, do you think no one will criticise us?” – For the Commonwealth Games women’s team final, where Singapore played against Malaysia, Lee Bee Wah had suggested that the coach field Ms Isabelle Li for two singles matches (Askmelah: WTF, No Balls?).

Updated 28 Sep 2014