Who are Singapore’s past Olympic medallists?

SINGAPORE - Singapore made its Olympic debut as a British colony at London 1948 with its sole representative, fireman Lloyd Valberg, who was the late grand uncle of Olympic champion Joseph Schooling. He finished joint-14th out of 27 high jumpers with a 1.8m leap.

Since then, the Republic’s athletes have competed in every edition of the Games, except in Moscow 1980 when Singapore joined a United States-led boycott.

Team Singapore have won a total of five medals at the Olympics – one gold, two silvers and two bronzes. The Straits Times looks at the medallists through the years.

Tan Howe Liang, weightlifting (1960)

Achievement: Men’s lightweight silver

He finished ninth in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, but that wasn’t good enough for the then 23-year-old Tan Howe Liang, who was inspired to pick up weightlifting after watching a competition at an amusement park. He vowed to his father that he would become the strongest man in the world.

Two years later, he would go on to establish a world record in the clean-and-jerk in the lightweight (under-67.5kg) category, with a lift of around 157.4kg at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games.

An hour and a half before the final lift at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he felt an incredible pain in his legs and was advised by doctors to withdraw from the competition in order to seek treatment. But the 27-year-old refused, and went on to lift 155kg in the clean-and-jerk. Having lifted a total of 380kg, Tan clinched a silver – Singapore’s first Olympic medal.

Feng Tianwei, Li Jiawei, and Wang Yuegu, table tennis (2008, 2012)

Achievement: Women’s team silver and bronze

Forty-eight years after Tan’s triumph, Singapore’s next Olympic medal would come from its women’s table tennis team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The team consisting of Feng Tianwei, Li Jiawei and Wang Yuegu clinched victory against South Korea in the semi-finals, before losing 3-0 to China in the final.

Four years later in London, the trio defeated South Korea again to clinch the bronze after losing their semi-final bout to Japan.

Feng Tianwei, table tennis (2012)

Achievement: Women’s singles bronze

After losing to China’s Zhang Yining in the women’s singles quarter-finals in Bejing in 2008, Feng returned to the Games with a vengeance in 2012.

She was Team Singapore’s flagbearer that year and in the singles, she beat Chinese Taipei’s Chen Szu-yu, Germany’s Wu Jiaduo, South Korea’s Kim Kyung-ah, and Japan’s Kasumi Ishikawa to win another bronze for Singapore.

Joseph Schooling, swimming (2016)

Achievement: Men’s 100m butterfly gold

As a 16-year-old, Schooling made his first big splash in region after winning golds in the 50m and 200m butterfly at the 2011 SEA Games, before adding a silver at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

At the Asian Games that year, he sounded another warning to his rivals by claiming a gold, silver and bronze in the 100m, 50m and 200m fly events. After another successful nine-gold haul at the 2015 SEA Games on home soil, he went on to win Singapore’s first medal at the world championships – a bronze in the 100m fly – in Kazan.

History was made a year later at the Rio Olympics, where he clocked an Olympic record time of 50.39 seconds to beat swimming legend Michael Phelps to gold – another first for Singapore.