Former S’pore sprinter Gary Yeo ‘privileged’ to fly athletics team to Asian Games

SINGAPORE – Singapore’s track and field athletes will be flying to Hangzhou for the 2022 Asian Games with a familiar face on their flight on Wednesday afternoon.

Former national sprinter Gary Yeo will be in the cockpit as the first officer for Scoot flight TR188, which will depart from Changi Airport for Hangzhou with a Singapore Athletics contingent comprising high jumpers Michelle Sng and Kampton Kam, runner Goh Chui Ling and hurdler Ang Chen Xiang.

The rest of the 20-member team travelled to China earlier on Tuesday.

Yeo said: “It was the company that asked me, I thought of volunteering, but I did not want to trouble anybody,” he said.

The 37-year-old, who won five silvers at the SEA Games from 2009 to 2015, said: “It’s always a privilege to represent the company to fly the athletes, given that I was once an athlete.

“But now I am on the operating side, considering it another form of public service, unfortunately, I won’t be landing the plane.”

Yeo says that he is excited to meet some of his former teammates like Sng, Goh and Ang on the flight.

Singapore Athletics president Lien Choong Luen said that former sprinter Yeo is coming full circle to help out the team in another way.

Lien said: “Our national athletes are doing us proud in Hangzhou, a reflection of the time that they have spent in training and build-up competitions.

“But even after their competitive years are over, many stay on as coaches, administrators or parents to a whole new generation of athletes.

“Gary was a national athlete competing at the Asian Games, a part of the Singapore Athletics committee and now flying the team to the Games.”

Yeo served on the

SAA committee as the athletes’ commission representative and stepped down in March 2020.

When asked whether he would consider rejoining the association, Yeo told the Straits Times: “I think given the right opportunity and the right timing, it’s something that I would have to give serious thought to, I wouldn’t say no right now at this moment.”

Yeo won a 100m silver at the 2011 SEA Games in Palembang and was part of the quartet who won four silvers at the Games – they clocked the national record of 39.24 seconds at the 2015 edition on home soil.

He also competed in the 2012 London Olympics, and the 2010 and 2014 Asian Games.

Yeo does not miss running but rather the “level of competition and intensity”, as he is now focused on his job.

He believes that the 20-member track and field team will make Singapore proud in Hangzhou, adding: “The athletes under coach Luis (Cunha) do stand a chance of getting a medal, of course there is the relay team as well, they are on an upward trajectory.”