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SEA Games not an 'exposure trip': Tan Eng Liang

The SEA Games is not for the purpose of giving young Singapore athletes exposure.

Chef de Mission (CDM) Tan Eng Liang reiterated that to Yahoo! Singapore at the sidelines of a send off ceremony for the first batch of Team Singapore athletes to the SEA Games at Changi Airport on Tuesday morning.

Tan said the SEA Games is one of the four major sporting events for Singapore and that it can no longer be a “exposure trip.”

“Development should be done by the National Sports Associations (NSAs) throughout the two years and so on. We tell them in advance to please get your athletes ready based on the two years’ time. We are quite fair in our selection criteria. To me, the issue is very straightforward,” said Tan, responding to the latest debate on sending young athletes for exposure versus medal hopefuls.

There was also a spat regarding this issue last week between the CDM and Singapore Table Tennis Association President Lee Bee Wah, who is also the Member for Parliament for Nee Soon group representation constituency.

Lee had argued for fielding young homegrown talent. In a Facebook post last week, she voiced her encouragement to 16-year-old paddler Isabelle Li, writing, “I am sure Isabelle is keen to prove her critics wrong… (her not being ranked second or third) in Singapore does not mean that we should not give her a chance.”

“By all means send young players but we have a selection criteria. If you are 16 years old and qualify and if you are 25 years old and qualify in the same event, we send both. But if you don’t qualify, that’s where the issue is,” Tan said.

“But even when you don’t qualify, we’ve been generous. If you miss by say 0.5 and you are young and talented, we can still consider sending you,” he pointed out.