Teamwork the main point of success

Singapore's fencers reaped the fruit of years of labour at these SEA Games, as greater cohesion within the scene led to their best-ever showing of six gold, four silver and five bronze medals.

The Republic capped a fantastic campaign in Hanoi yesterday with their third consecutive title in the men's team foil and a historic silver in the women's team sabre events.

Their previous best in the regional competition before this came at the 2019 Philippine Games, where they bagged four golds, three silvers and six bronzes.

It was a perfect send-off for national head coach Andrey Klyushin, who will be stepping down from his post. The Russian, who has held the post for five years, believes that the performance in Hanoi was a result of greater collaboration between clubs and the national set-up.

He said: "The main thing was to put all the coaches and fencers together because if everyone is working in different corners, we will never get an Olympic champion. It's a lot teamwork and team spirit."

Team manager Marko Milic was also quick to credit the work of past generations of fencers, who laid the groundwork for this current crop of fencers to excel.

What was encouraging for the Serb was seeing breakthroughs in other weapons apart from foil.

At this year's Games, Singapore claimed historic titles in the women's and men's team epee, men's team sabre and the men's individual foil events.

While he acknowledged that time was needed to build the depth in other weapons, notching these milestones was a stepping stone towards making Singapore a top-five fencing country in Asia.

He said: "If you are equally strong in different weapons, that's the real strength. Also with the newcomers (12 of the 24 fencers were debutants), I can say SEA Games is a checking point for us, it's a filter to see who is really there.

"To think about Asia, we have to be best in the region."

Teamwork was also a common theme among the athletes, and was especially important as the pandemic disrupted training and competition plans.

Newly minted individual foil champion Jonathan Au Eong, part of the men's team who won their third consecutive title in the event yesterday, said this was key to the team's success even though they were all debutants.

The 21-year-old said: "We knew we wanted to win gold and that really continued to drive us even when the pandemic created a lot of disruptions.

"But with a goal in sight, we really just pushed on and focused on that gold, which motivated us to go training by training even when perhaps the end was not so near in sight."