SEA Games 2025: Team Singapore can win away-record 60 golds in Thailand

BANGKOK – History beckons for Team Singapore in Thailand, where its largest-ever contingent of 930 athletes battles for gold medals across 48 sports at the Dec 9-20 SEA Games.

In a year when the nation celebrates its SG60 milestone, The Straits Times believes that Singapore’s representatives can win 60 golds for its biggest overseas haul at the Games.

In 2017, Singapore’s 568-strong contingent won 57 golds, 58 silvers and 73 bronzes across 35 sports – its best for an away Games.

Once again, the Republic’s athletes are expected to dominate in aquatics, fencing and table tennis, which would help bring in more than half of the 60-gold target, while mounting a strong challenge in bowling, sailing and shooting.

Since 2005, Singapore have been the best swimming nation at the SEA Games. At the last edition, they claimed 22 golds and this time the squad boasts a blend of experience and youth led by sprint king Teong Tzen Wei and the Quah siblings Ting Wen, Zheng Wen and Jing Wen, who have won 134 medals in total.

Despite the

retirement of Olympic champion Joseph Schooling

in 2024, there is no doubt they will continue to reign supreme at the Asean level, although they will face a challenge courtesy of Kayla Sanchez, an Olympic and world championship medallist with Canada who now competes for the Philippines.

Despite setting a modest target of 20 golds across five disciplines, Singapore Aquatics can bank on the men’s water polo team to retain their title, while challenging for top honours in the women’s event. They will also be aided by the return of the artistic swimming competition (three events) for the first time since 2017.

Former SEA Games water polo champion Yip Ren Kai is confident that Singapore can hit 60 golds, adding: “We should always look to improve on our personal bests to move forward as we build towards the 2026 Asian Games and 2028 Olympics.

“I’m looking forward to aquatics, fencing and table tennis contributing the bulk of the tally and hoping our top athletes from athletics, bowling, sailing, shooting martial arts can chip in, and others from emerging sports can step up with golden breakthroughs.”

The national fencers also showed their superiority after surpassing Vietnam at the 2019 Games. In 2023, they had their best campaign with seven golds and they are targeting a clean sweep of all 12 fencing golds at the home Games in 2029, which suggests an improved showing in 2025 is expected.

Meanwhile, after reclaiming their dominance in the region in 2023, the national table tennis players continue their resurgence after ending their reliance on China-born players. With just Hunan-native Zeng Jian in their ranks, they could still better

their four golds from the last edition

.

The return of bowling (six events) and shooting (30) to the programme after their hiatus in Cambodia will also be a boost, with the national keglers having won titles at recent world and Asian championships as well as on the professional tours in America. The national rifle and pistol athletes are also a match for anyone in South-east Asia when they are on fire.

In team sports, Singapore are aiming to retain their

surprise men’s softball gold from 2019

and will be hot favourites to win gold in netball and women’s floorball.

While they are not powerhouses in athletics and ju-jitsu, sprinter Shanti Pereira has become a force in Asia and Asean and

Noah Lim could make it a hat-trick of men’s newaza under-69kg titles

. The nation’s pugilists in pencak silat and wushu should also add a sprinkling of golds.

Several former world champions will be out to prove a point, with Olympic bronze medallist kitefoiler Maximilian Maeder set to make his SEA Games debut, and hopefully lead Singapore back to the top of the sailing charts for the first time since 2015. Veteran cue master

Peter Gilchrist is hungry to reclaim his English billiards gold

after Myanmar’s Pauk Sa beat him to it in 2022 and 2023, and badminton’s

Loh Kean Yew is looking for a breakthrough

after losing in the 2019 and 2022 men’s singles final.

Of the 50 sports, Singapore will not compete in petanque and teqball, and they are not expected to break their gold-medal drought in basketball, football, handball, ice hockey, kickboxing, muay thai, rugby sevens, sepak takraw, tennis and volleyball.

But there is always room for surprises, like how Timothy Loh switched from judo to sambo to Greco-Roman wrestling – collecting SEA Games bronzes in each sport – before he won a

historic freestyle wrestling gold in 2023

.

Team Singapore hit the 50-gold milestone for the first time as hosts in 1993 but took 22 years to cross that mark when they next staged the Games in 2015 for a record 84 golds, 73 silvers and 102 bronzes.

In between, they managed to put together strong away performances in 2005 (42 golds), 2007 (43) and 2011 (42), but standards improved after 2015 as they followed up with an away-best of 58 golds in 2017, slipped to 53 and 47 golds in the next editions before rebounding to 51 in 2023.

Veteran sports administrator and former Singapore Sailing president Low Teo Ping noted that there should not be a blind pursuit of SEA Games golds, as the ultimate aim must be to make an impact at the Asian Games and Olympics.

Stressing that developing a pipeline of athletes is key, he said: “We cannot focus on only high performance without giving opportunities for pipeline development, of which the SEA Games should be part of that route and strategy for the more developed sports to identify future talents.”

As the competition kicks off officially on Dec 10, hosts Thailand will also begin their medal quest for a record 241 golds, while 2023 table-toppers Vietnam are aiming for 100, and Indonesia target 85.