The National Swim Sagas

I don't actually know how reporters and journalists work, but I must admit that they are doing a very good job on digging up news on the local sporting fraternity.

Last week, they reported that a former national swimmer was charged for going AWOL during his National Service. The swimmer was supposed to be at swim trainings but wasn't present, his coach marked him as present anyway. In the end, both of them are now suspended from swimming competition.



To the swimmer, it doesn't affect him much, as he had already retired from competitive swimming. I think the blow will be much bigger to his coach, as his reputation will go down the drain. By the way, he was also a former national swimmer, who won medals for our nation. He was also supposed to be part of the coaching team that is SEA Games bound, but with that banned, I believe he can also say goodbye to working under the Singapore Swimming Association (SSA) in the future too.

For this saga alone, what has their federation done? Except for meting out punishments, in my perspective, they didn't seemed to help both of them. With the SEA Games looming and it is always our biggest gold medals contributor, can't the federation do something about handling the matter in a more subtle way? I mean, what's going to happen to the morale of the swim team? And most importantly, what will the male swimmers think of the federation, when eventually they have to enlist into National Service.

With the SSA's reputation taking a hugh blow, the awesome reporters managed to fish out former National Swim coach, Peter Churchill's seemingly alleged liaison with a female National swimmer, and this incident happened 2 year ago. He had already gone back to his country. He was also un-contactable when these reports surfaced during the past few days.

To be frank, when people are being approached and he suddenly become un-contactable, something fishy must be going on. If he had really done something like this, seriously if I were him, I would also remain in hiding until everything dies down. And just to point out, what did SSA do? They practically wash themselves off the whole affairs because Peter Churchill was employed under the Sports School during that period of time. So responsible of them!

The SSA may not be able to comment much on the 2 sagas, but Peter Churchill did help them groomed Tao Li into the swim star today. So did the former swimmer and his coach, who had won medals at the SEA Games. Given their credit, couldn't SSA stand by them with a vote of confidence? I do feel that both matters could be handle in a better way by SSA, but apparently they simply did nothing to help them and even their own reputation.

Looking towards the next few days, I believe that there will definitely be more reports surfacing regarding Peter Churchill, and I also believe the SSA will keep on going mum about it...