SEA Games 2025: S’pore archer Madeleine Ong sees silver lining after losing 3 medal matches in a day

BANGKOK – Despite the heartbreak of losing three medal matches in a day, Singapore archer Madeleine Ong saw the positives as she collected silvers in the compound women’s team and individual events at the Sports Authority of Thailand field on Dec 18.

Amid unpredictably windy conditions, the Singapore team comprising Ong, Ellie Low and Jeannice Low lost 228-227 to Indonesia’s Nurisa Ashrifah, Ratih Fadhly and Yurike Pereira in the team event, missing out on a historic gold by just a point, before Nurisa pipped Ong 142-140 in the individual final.

Indonesia proved to be the scourge of Singapore as Nurisa and Prima Wardhana beat Ong and Woon Teng Ng 153-150 in the compound mixed team bronze play-off.

Ong, 31, said: “When I took my shots, the wind actually picked up, so it was very difficult to aim. I just did my best to stay calm, because having the dot out of the target sometimes was very scary, because that would mean that if the arrow gets released at the wrong time, that’s a miss. So I had to control my nerves.”

While it was a painful day for her, she also put things in perspective.

She said: “Of course, there’s definitely heartbreak in losing. I will be lying if I said I wasn’t sad, because my team and I put in so much effort and definitely I wanted to bring home gold for Team Singapore.

“But I woke up feeling very thankful I have three medal matches to compete in for the first time, so I also feel encouraged.”

Hers has been a story of determination. She was keen to join the sport as a co-curricular activity in secondary school but lost a ballot and joined art and craft instead.

Undeterred, she tried out archery at a now-defunct range at a HomeTeamNS outlet in 2011 and made it to the national team three years later, as did her younger sister Clarice who has since retired.

She participated in her first SEA Games in 2015, became a full-time athlete in 2020 and won an individual bronze in 2022.

Following her two silvers at the biennial meet in 2025, she is eyeing more improvement in the next editions in Malaysia in 2027 and Singapore in 2029.

On Dec 17, fellow archers Li Yue Long and Tabitha Yeo had secured gold when they beat Malaysia in the mixed recurve team final. Singapore’s haul of one gold and two silvers in archery made this their best SEA Games outing since 1983 when they won two golds, one silver and one bronze.

The main difference between the recurve and compound events lies in the bows used.

The two ends of a recurve bow curve away from the archers after curving inwards, while the compound bow features pulleys, cables, a magnifying lens and a release switch.

Also, the target distance and bull’s eye diameter vary at 70m and 12.2cm for recurve and 50m and 8cm for compound respectively.

Recurve has been the only archery discipline at the Olympics since Munich 1972, while compound will make its debut at Los Angeles 2028 through the mixed compound team event.

Encouraged by the unexpectedly strong showing by the 13 archers – of whom only Ong and Woon were not debutants – Archery Association of Singapore president Edelin Wong is eyeing qualification for LA 2028.

She said: “The lease of our facility in Bedok is ending soon and we are excited to move to our new training ground in Punggol. We are thankful to Sport Singapore for giving us a permanent ground for us to continue training and grooming new archers.

“Compared to the ground-level facility in Bedok, the Punggol range is on the roof, which helps us train better with windy conditions which will hopefully give us an advantage. The new range will also be powered by electricity instead of solar panels, so we will face less outages in the power supply for our timer and scoreboard.

“With improved facilities, we hope our younger archers can continue to grow and do well at the Asian Games in 2026, qualify for the Olympics in 2028 and have more podium finishes at the SEA Games in 2029.”