Max Maeder: A boy and a bronze, what a wonder

MARSEILLE – Finally, there it is, glinting by the Mediterranean Sea. Finally, an Olympic medal sits on Max Maeder’s chest, this bronze orb, 455g in weight but whose heft is immeasurable. Finally, on the table which counts medals, SINGAPORE can be found. Sport is always more than a medal, but these metal spheres send a message. Hey world, Singapore can play, too.

Finally, all this, this feat and this wonder, has been crafted by a 17-year-old boy.

Imagine.

A boy who comes off the water in Marseille and is enveloped in a hug by his mother who can barely watch him compete. Colour of medal doesn’t matter to her, this is her hurting boy. Later, he dabs his eyes with a tissue. He came to win gold and something is stinging inside him and it’s hard to watch and yet it’s beautiful. These Games, as a champion told me, are “brutal”. But this unsatisfied boy has sizeable dreams. 

The sea on Aug 9 is a shimmering blue, the landscape dotted with Singapore red. It’s appropriate that this is National Day, a day when a nation gives thanks to the old for what was built and look to the young for what must come. The future rests with them and Max is helping take us there. He got onto the first step of the podium and that’s where all climbs to greatness begin.

This boy has brought us to water and made us sip at the cup of possibility. He is an athlete to be celebrated, for the way he behaves – the first thing he did was praise every rival – the homework he does and the ambition he owns. Take a small story.

At the 2023 Asian Games, the sailors were playing Mario Kart, a Nintendo game, and Max was getting, well, a beating. He took it politely but returned to his room, watched Mario Kart videos and read up on it.

As sailor Cecilia Low, who told me this story, said admiringly: “Next day he started winning. Started beating everyone. It shows me not just that he’s a competitive person, he’s also a very curious person.”

The Marseille sailing area was partially deserted on Aug 9: 320-odd sailors were here once, now only four in the kitefoiling remained. They were 24, 23, 19 and Max, 17. His maturity, his listening to Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus while he waited to compete, makes us forget his boyishness. He is the youngest in the Singapore contingent, the youngest of 20 competitors in kitefoiling, the youngest Singapore medallist ever. This is a bronze work in progress.

He is an interested boy and yet a hardy one. The 400m hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who set a world record, said “a 1,000 per cent” she was nervous before her event. These are the Olympics, after all. And yet as the sun beat down like a fist on Marseille this week, and the lack of wind brought volatility and diluted the differences within the field, the boy did not shrink from challenge. On Wednesday, he said: “It wouldn’t be exciting if you weren’t nervous or anxious or tense. That’s what makes it beautiful.”

Athletes come to competition like wind-up toys, their inner motors – physical and mental – tuned to compete. At the kitefoiling, for days on end, they had to wait and then on command restart their human motors. As if their talent was a switch. It was the same for everyone but he was still – on Sept 12 he will be 18 – the boy in this field.

But a boy forged by self-discipline. In Engadin, Switzerland during Christmas, his father told him “it’s a beautiful day, let’s go ski”, but Max declined. He can’t resist speed, it’s his calling, and so he knew he could get hurt before the Olympics. And so he stopped himself because he understood, his talent, in a way, is not only his own. He competes for himself, first, for his family but also for his country.

At 17 he is the world champion but the Olympics do not care for past titles. Josh Kerr was world champion in the 1,500m and Yui Susaki in the women’s 50kg wrestling. Neither won gold. Every competition you start anew. The best athletes hurdle every circumstance and find a way to stay competitive every time. As greatness bumps shoulders, they keep creating a chance for another medal. This boy, our boy, did just that.

His parents, Hwee Keng and Valentin, stood on the beach, just proud of their son. They see sport as an education, a succession of experiences, a wandering of the world. They want him to enjoy it, take from it, give to others. They hope he inspires and changes minds about sport in Singapore. That they do not measure their child by the colour of a medal is perhaps why Max won a medal. As we grow a culture in Singapore, it is these pieces we must put in our jigsaw.

Later in the press conference, it was good to see Max laugh. When I last saw him he was walking away, SINGAPORE stencilled on his jacket, wearing his bronze medal. A boy on the move. On the underside of his watch are written two words in Latin.

Plus Ultra, it says. Further Beyond.

It is where he has gone, where he has taken us and where he is still to go.