It takes two: Parallel frames at the Asian Games

NAGOYA – Across 16 days, as they covered multiple sports at the Asian Games in Japan, The Straits Times’ chief photojournalist Kevin Lim and executive photojournalist Mark Cheong came up with a collaborative visual project using diptychs.

It features pairs of images taken by each photographer, with shared details, visual compositions and moods.

Flying the flag, carrying the nation’s hopes

In two defining images of Singapore’s sporting triumph, the national flag became a poignant symbol of both solitary reflection and unbridled joy.

For sprinter Shanti Pereira, victory brought rare solitude amid the chaos – a fleeting moment spent with the red-and-white flag draped around her body, fully bowed as she absorbed the weight of years of silent sacrifice.

It was a stark yet harmonious contrast to mixed martial artist Tiffany Teo’s own euphoric celebration, where, similarly draped in the national colours, she was hoisted onto the shoulders of her husband and coach Sim Kai Xiong for an exuberant victory lap around the arena.

The weight of expectations

No amount of hand signals and strategies could prevent the world No. 1 Chinese badminton pairing of Liu Shengshu and Tan Ning – Liu injured herself while trying to save a drop shot and Tan had to carry the load while her teammate hobbled in pain for the final set – from falling to the South Korean No. 2 pair of Baek Ha-na and Lee So-hee in the women’s doubles final. 

Trained under a centralised state system from an early age, China’s athletes are conditioned to treat victory as national duty rather than personal triumph. In a sporting culture where only gold will suffice, silver and bronze medals serve as reminders of defeat.

The bronze medal won by Singapore’s wushu exponent Zeanne Law, however, was celebrated as the one that kick-started the nation’s medal chase at the Games.

Racing on different tracks

Whether it is the top-tier Diamond League in athletics or the popular video game League of Legends, victory is forged in milliseconds and refined through relentless repetition.

While traditional track athletes take years to perfect their stride, competitive gamers spend years developing the thumb calluses required to survive a best-of-three or -five series.

Having made its debut as a demonstration sport at the 2018 Asian Games, e-sports became a medal event in Hangzhou in 2023 and remained on the programme at the Aichi-Nagoya edition.

Athleticism at its peak

Suspended in midair above the curved table, the teqball player contorts her body horizontally, delivering an explosive smash that barely clears the net before snapping onto her opponent’s side.

It is a feat of aerial mastery that would look right at home in a martial arts arena. 

The biomechanics of teqball’s signature acrobatic kicks bear a striking resemblance to those of a taekwondo exponent executing an airborne technique in poomsae.

After launching their bodies off the ground, both athletes must generate immense rotational force through sheer core strength, contorting their physical forms with precision and power at the apex of their jumps.

In that fleeting second of seemingly complete weightlessness, competitive sport transforms into pure acrobatic geometry.

Lights and lines

The beauty of sport encompasses not only an athlete’s actions and emotions, but also how they blend in with or stand out from their surroundings. 

At the women’s street skateboarding final, it looked less like a competition and more like a demonstration in an urban street plaza, which the course was designed to mimic. 

The geometric shapes of the obstacles, including the rails, ledges and embankments, were a pleasant change from those found at other sporting venues. 

Over at badminton, photojournalist Kevin Lim used an in-camera double exposure technique to frame South Korean world No. 1 An Se-young as she leapt, juxtaposed against the indoor lights, for a smash during her women’s singles final against Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi.

Small ball, big ball, same goal

At first glance, football and table tennis have little in common. One uses a ball that is more than five times the size of the other.

Football is played on a 105m by 68m pitch, while a table tennis table measures about 2.7m by 1.5m.

But both sports rely heavily on exploiting angles and position, whether through a well-rehearsed corner kick routine to bamboozle opponents or a heavy sidespin serve to open up the far corner.

Victory in both sports is more often than not achieved by those who dictate the tempo and make the best use of space.

Same same, but different

In the two photos, it is easy to mistake one sport for the other. Sanda, also known as Chinese kickboxing, can look visually similar to Western boxing.

Donning protective gear such as padded gloves, athletes in both disciplines commonly score with clean strikes to the head. The sanda exponent and boxer also share an arsenal of jabs, crosses, hooks and uppercuts.

When covering sanda and boxing, the differences become apparent.

While boxing is strictly limited to upper-body striking using closed fists, sanda is a full-contact sport that combines punches, kicks, knees, takedowns and throws.

Covering the games

From the get-go, an eight-to-eight work day easily stretched to eight-to-late during the Games.

Unlike other major sporting meets, shuttle buses were few and far between in Japan, which meant the majority of commutes to venues were via public trains and buses.

This became a daily sports event by itself – the photographers usually had to walk from train stations to venues that were often 15 to 30 minutes away by foot. 

The silver lining of this inconvenience was that it allowed the photographers to take in another side of Aichi and Nagoya, passing little residential neighbourhoods, busy intersections and getting a feel for daily life in Japan.

Thousands of photographers and reporters descended upon Japan for the Asian Games, all trying to get an exclusive story or that one-of-a-kind picture that would set them apart from other media outlets.

Positions for photographers almost always involved getting to the venue early to queue up to “chope” prime spots, which were often very limited. 

Certain venues also had protocols that prevented the media from taking up prime positions, meaning some sneaking around was needed to get the best shot.

One of the main highlights of the Games was covering the 100m and 200m athletics finals, where Shanti Pereira won silver and gold respectively. 

If Pereira was to recreate her feats from the Asian Games in Hangzhou in 2023, the team wanted to have as many angles as they could to make sure that they captured not only the action of the races but also her emotions after she crossed the finishing line.

Cheong also set up a remote camera at the finishing line to get as close an angle of her as possible at the end of her races.  

The rain also came down hard from the second day of athletics, making it increasingly challenging for the photographers to keep their gear dry while chasing moments.

How could this interactive story not include other personal favourite frames, including those that made neither the print nor online stories? They deserve to see the light of day.

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