THE Singapore Athletic Association has responded to comments about its selection policy for the Asian Youth Games, explaining that its 12 athletes were selected based on World Youth Championships qualifying standards.

It made this reply after Senior Parliamentary Secretary (Community Development, Youth and Sports) Teo Ser Luck's comments on Singapore's lost gold-medal opportunity in the AYG girls' shot put event last week.

Last Thursday, Mr Teo observed that Schools National B girls' champion Lim Wei Ying, who threw 10.06m in April, would have won a gold medal if she had been selected.

The event featured only two athletes after two others withdrew. One opted out because of injury, the other was from the Malaysian team that withdrew from the Games because of the H1N1 virus.

Iran's Nazanin Golahmadi won with 8.77m while Qatar's Omar Ba Fatima was second with 8.21m.

'I felt it was a waste when I saw there were fewer than three athletes for some events,' said Mr Teo. 'Our distance was competitive enough to fight for a gold, so it is something we should look into.'

But SAA technical director C. Veeramani explained that the SAA had used World Youth Championship qualifying marks as as reference points for selecting Singapore's AYG team and that Wei Ying was not selected as she did not meet them.

This selection criteria was published on the SAA's website and the best performers during the Jan 1 to April 24 qualifying period - who met or came closest to the World Youth mark for their respective events - were picked.

The World Youth qualifying mark for the girls' shot put was 12.50m. Wei Ying's 10.06m was 20 per cent off the mark.

Competition rules set by the AYG organisers also limited each athletics contingent to six boys and six girls. Singapore used up its quota and participated in 17 of the 28 events. It won four bronzes.

Veeramani added that the SAA chose not to slot in any of its athletes for the shot put final at the last minute, even when an easy medal win seemed clear, as it did not want to sacrifice its integrity.

The final list was revealed to all teams on June 29, the day before the four-day athletics meet. It would have been dishonest to bend the rules, he explained.

It is understood Iran tried to enter a thrower in the javelin event, which also had only two girls, but was rejected.