Forum: Don’t overlook potential of athletes outside conventional pathways
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Tiffany Teo’s Asian Games gold is remarkable not only because she won it at 36, but because her journey to the podium was unconventional (From choir girl to MMA Asian Games gold: How Tiffany Teo overcame adversity to make history, Sept 22).
She took up taekwondo only at 17, moved into mixed martial arts later, endured setbacks, spent years away from competition and even contemplated retirement before finding her way back.
Her story offers a useful reminder for Singapore sport.
As a former technical director at the Singapore Bowling Federation, I’ve seen that structured athlete pathways, coaching systems and performance standards matter.
But athlete development rarely follows a straight line.
Singapore has invested in structured pathways to identify and develop promising athletes.
Our existing high-performance framework also recognises that athletes develop differently, with support based on performance and potential rather than age alone. That is the right philosophy. The opportunity now is to keep strengthening how athletes outside conventional pathways can find their way into, or back into, the high-performance system.
Some athletes develop later. Others change sports or step away because of education, national service, work, injury or other circumstances. New sports and disciplines also emerge, creating opportunities that may not have existed earlier.
We should be careful not to overlook genuine potential simply because it emerges differently.
National sports associations and high-performance programmes could make opportunities for re-entry and talent identification more visible, particularly in emerging sports or where capabilities transfer across disciplines. Athletes outside established squads should have clear routes to demonstrate that they merit another look.
Teo’s success should be celebrated for what it is. But it should also prompt us to ask whether we are equally good at recognising talent when it emerges later, differently or after a period away.
Surein Sandrasageran