Equipped for success: How Singapore’s athletes bond with the tools of their trade

In April, golfer Shannon Tan travelled to Carlsbad, California, to a place where they carve and cut and shape famous instruments from steel. Inside this equipment factory of unique craftsmanship where you cannot take pictures – she says she had to sign a waiver to that effect – she was filmed by multiple cameras. 

Tan, whose last Major was a top-10 finish at the Women’s British Open, had arrived at the famous Scotty Cameron Putter Studio, where professional golfers come to be fitted for putters. Tiger Woods won all his Majors using these putters, and now Tan – sponsored by Titleist, which is the same family as Scotty Cameron – was looking for her own new implement of feel, alignment, delicacy and precision.

After two hours of shapes studied, necks examined and five to 10 putters experimented with, she found something you can’t find on a shop shelf. Eventually, Tan has to sink the putts herself, but like a violinist, she was in search of the perfect instrument to assist her.

Most athletes would appreciate this fastidiousness, for like architects, sculptors, writers (Ernest Hemingway loved his No. 2 pencils), surgeons, their tools are intrinsic to their craft. In some ways, like a fencer with her sword, their equipment is an extension of them.

It’s why, before the Asian Games begin, chief photojournalist Kevin Lim and I decided to examine this kinship between athletes and their tools. What they carry, the little things they can’t do without – wushu exponent Jowen Lim carries a steamer to remove wrinkles from his clothes – and sometimes why they never let go of them.

Hurdler Calvin Quek, who was unfortunately injured and will miss the Games, knows his life story is about more than medals and times. It also involves a series of objects, kept in a simple black box in storage, which tell a colourful tale about his journey.

Spikes.

Spikes from when he was 15, spikes with which he won his first SEA Games gold medal, spikes he used to break his first national record.

“It’s something to look back on,” he explains. “Physical items which give my career a timeline.”

Not every athlete keeps equipment; they’re not as sentimental as musicians because rackets, sabres, wushu cudgels and bicycles all have a use-by date, unlike guitars. Shoes lose their grip and must be exchanged.

When I ask badminton player Yeo Jia Min on the phone how many rackets she has at home, she starts counting.

“Five, seven, eight, 15”.

Shoes?

“Hold on,” she laughs. “Let me look under my bed.”

“Four or five,” she confirms. With another five pairs in her training locker. 

At least Yeo is modest when it comes to her equipment, far removed from the NBA’s stylist P.J. Tucker, who was called the “Sneaker King”. One season, he showed off 106 pairs of shoes.

So much to unpack

In the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History is a bicycle named after a horse. In 1935, Fred A. Birchmore travelled around the world on a bicycle he fittingly called Bucephalus, which was the steed Alexander the Great rode on during his vast conquests.

“Some people (even now) name their bikes,” says Elizabeth Liau, “but I don’t.” Her brand-new road bike, which she’ll ride in Nagoya during the Games, is a piece of aerodynamic architecture with a prosaic title: A 2026 Dogma F Dura Ace Di2, which costs $19,000 to $20,000 and weighs 7.7kg.

In cycling, body and equipment fuse together, turning into a single, spinning, hunched-over, brilliant blur. Sometimes Liau, who can move at 90kmh, falls, her skin tears, handlebars snap, like they did recently. Her bike is new and scars on her arm show human repair. In her career, she’s had a grade 2 medial collateral ligament tear, two broken collarbones, seven stitches to the right shin and 25 stitches in one arm. It’s a fortuitous thing that she’s a registered nurse.

Nothing is fair in sport, and it is equally true when it comes to weight of equipment. Swimmers carry goggles that fit in a pocket, while an equestrienne requires a specialised airline container – their instrument is a horse. Divers pack Itac2 (a beeswax-based grip applied to palms and shins so hands don’t slip during somersaults) while fencer Juliet Heng’s luggage resembles a travelling boutique.

She carries long socks, electric glove, breeches, chest protector, jacket, lame (an electrically conductive jacket) mask and shoes. Once, she went to a photo shoot with water polo players whose only adornment was that amusing bonnet. “They brought nothing,” she laughs. “I was so envious.”

Still, even Heng can’t match Liau, whose packing list includes spare Vittoria tyres, tubes, pump, spare rear hanger, spare bike, spare wheels, two MET helmets, two pairs of cycling shoes, Aero socks and gloves, Aero shoe covers, Oakley sunglasses, charging wires for her electronic gear-shifting system and power meter. It sounds like a lot, but there’s never any such thing as enough.

Once, the tennis player Goran Ivanisevic smashed three rackets, found he had none left, and had to default. Wushu’s Lim, who is much better behaved, carried only two swords once, but both broke (they chip and crack), and now he travels with four.

Yeo takes eight rackets with her during three-week trips. Her Li-Ning Axforce 70 5U rackets weigh 75g to 79g, are as light and punishing as a swishing cane, and she has never thrown one. As a kid, if she even dropped one, her first coach had a ready response.

“Ten push-ups.”

Superstition

In the studio, under the lights, Lim, dressed in a flamboyant wushu outfit that is made only in China, ties his laces in a double knot and tucks them into his shoes. “It looks neater,” he says. His performances are athletic, artistic and precise, and sometimes he whirls and flies like the red dragon that is embossed on his 165cm cudgel.

“I treat it well,” he says of his cudgel and sword, “so that in competition it will serve me well.” He doesn’t like people to walk over his weapons, for he finds that disrespectful. His sword might be inanimate, yet it is his partner and sometimes, especially when he is very nervous, he will speak to it.

“Don’t break on me.”

Heng will let you hold her sword, and you are free to touch Liau’s bicycle. Yet, athletes can be fussy – about weight, manufacturer, grips, strings – like shooters who can get cranky just about grams of trigger pressure. Yeo is methodical in a different way. Her rackets are strung by her father, who bought a second-hand stringing machine and asked a friend to teach him this art.

If athletes can be whimsical about equipment, they can also slide into superstition. “They believe”, says Emily Ortega, dean of the School of Humanities and Behavioural Sciences at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, “that superstitious rituals may help to improve performance as it gives them a sense of control”. If the smallest thing can reduce anxiety, they will hold on to it.

Every grip on Tan’s golf clubs must be black. Heng has to wear the same sports bra, which is perfectly acceptable and far less peculiar than baseball star Jason Giambi’s revelation once that he wore a gold lame, tiger-striped thong when he was in a slump. When teammates were struggling, he loaned it to them.

Kerstin Ong, who is in the 4x100m relay team, has a far saner superstition. If she ties her laces incorrectly, she will take off both her spikes and start the entire process again. Once, she even had lucky earrings, but then one got misplaced and the superstition lost its power.

Equipment also turns into a billboard, on which prayer is scrawled, mottos written and inspiration inscribed. Basketballer Stephen Curry has a reference to a biblical verse, “I can do all things...”, inked on his shoes, while Heng has multiple things written on the guard of her sword.

In one part, she’s written in Chinese: “None of my strikes is wasted.” Next to it, she’s scrawled a line in English: “I only see my goals, I don’t believe in failure.” Sometimes when she’s at a competition, waiting for her bout, adrenaline racing, “needing to distract myself”, she’ll look down at these words. In a way, her equipment is speaking to her. 

All this is inspiration, but it is also fun. Like the nickname Tan has stamped onto the metal of her wedges.

“Shandog”.

Transformation

Take a blindfold, use it on shooter Jasmine Ser, then ask her if she can dismantle her 10m air rifle and put it back together.

“Yes.

“Just need an allen key.”

It’s inevitable, when athletes have such a relationship with their equipment, that it also transforms them. If Clark Kent ducked into a telephone booth and emerged as Superman, then athletes look like ordinary folk till they emerge from locker rooms.

Jerseys transform them and spikes alter them. When shooters hold a rifle, they enter a cocoon. When Liau sits on her bike, a charming young woman is suddenly a serious competitor. If someone wants to steal her drafting position, “sometimes the elbows have to come out”.

Rafael Nadal had a unique habit: he’d walk onto court with one racket in his hand, already unwrapped and unsheathed. Equipment is a reminder that this is work. Hold a sabre and even the body changes. Heng finds her eyesight is sharper because now she’s looking down a tunnel of focus. Lim simply feels “weird” without a weapon in his hand.

“It feels like an extension of me,” explains the wushu artist. When he wields it, his entire persona alters. “From the time I was young, I thought of myself as a madman with a sword for one minute 30 seconds. It’s so intense that after that, I have no strength.”

Who athletes are, the identities they create and the impact they make often flow through their instrument. No artist uses the same brush or wields it in the same way. Similarly, every badminton player is an original and uses a slim stick of carbon fibre and graphite to send a compelling message. Or, as Yeo says, the racket is how she conveys who she is.

“When I pick up my racket, I am expressing who I am. I feel empowered. I have control over how I want to use it, how I want to train, how to make full use of it. It all lies in my hands.

“On the court is just the racket and me.”

Her racket lives alongside a sea of accessories in her bag. In a way, all these can be classified as vital equipment. Water bottle for hydration. Grip spray on shoes to make them stick better. Antiseptic sprays for abrasion. Panadol for period pains. Protein bars and energy gels for revival. Cushion pads for knees during exercises. A journal to jot down badminton thoughts.

And then, among all these is a tiny object that always accompanies a devoted young woman.

A plushie of Jesus.