“COME TO THE PARTY”
At the press conference, Mr Chay said that athletics need to “come to the party”, noting the three golds in athletics compared with the 19 in swimming.
He said: “I think a lot of work has to be done there if we really want to chase medals, if we really want to consistently be top three in Southeast Asia, and if we want to have a strong home game showing because we know what the events are.
“We need to chase those events, and we need to get our athletes in athletics up to par with the rest of the region.”
Mr Chay noted that athletics is a sport at every major Games, and Singapore “needs to have more athletes at the world-class level”.
At this year’s Games, Shanti Pereira retained her titles in the 200m and 100m events, while Calvin Quek won Singapore’s first 400m hurdles SEA Games gold since 1965.
Singapore Athletics president Lien Choong Luen told CNA on Tuesday night that he had met Mr Chay and SportSG on Tuesday morning to discuss their next steps.
He said Mr Chay was “not technically wrong”, but athletics is “structurally quite different” from swimming, especially in Singapore’s context.
