Top image: Zachary Tang / RICE file photo
This story is part of RICE Media’s Storytellers initiative, a mentorship programme for budding content creators to learn about the art of creative non-fiction. This piece is a product of a partnership between RICE Media and Singapore Management University (SMU) for its Professional Writing module.
“Winning is not everything. It is the only thing.”
We have all heard of such cliché statements, especially this quote from Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches in American sports history.
As Singaporeans, we want to win. We love to win. We live to win.
In sports, we remember the historic wins of Joseph Schooling and Max Maeder in the Olympic Games. We stay up to watch the games and cheer loudly when they win.
While much of the spotlight is on elite success, a significant group of athletes—those who perform above average but fall short of the top-tier standards required for major competitions —often go overlooked.
Welcome to the world of the second-tier athletes.
‘Stuck in the middle’ defines their athletic careers—so close to the top, yet giving up would squander years of training.
Among the many second-tier athletes are Liam and Ryan, 24-year-old university students in the realm of swimming and fencing respectively.
Both have won medals in the local youth competitions and represented the nation at the youth level. However, they fell short of qualifying for the major games.
What truly distinguishes these athletes from their top-tier counterparts?
The Talent Gap Among Athletes
As blunt as it sounds, talent and genetics are major factors contributing to the gap. In his renowned book The Sports Genes, David Epstein explored the nature vs. nurture debate in athletics. He went on to debunk the idea that success in sports is solely due to hard work and practice.
Liam and Ryan acknowledged that talent plays a huge part in segregating the best athletes and the second-tier ones.
“It does bug me sometimes that I am always in the finals but never on the podium,” says Liam.
Funding from the National Sports Association (NSA) is equally important in the chasm between first-tier and second-tier athletes. The criteria needed to obtain the funding are difficult to achieve, with athletes needing to have the potential to win medals in major games.
To qualify for the funding, athletes are nominated by their respective NSAs to enter the national sports development system. The spexCarding is the entry point for high-performance athletes, and they are placed in different tiers on the High-Performance Sports (HPS) pathway.
Stipends are given to spexPotential, which supports athletes with the potential of winning at the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games), and the spexScholarship, which aims to support athletes that have won medals at Asian, World and Olympic levels.
The bar is high, meaning an athlete might sometimes be less supported earlier in their journey. This leaves a big gap for developing athletes when they aren’t offered financial support for their training, equipment and competitions.
First-tier athletes also receive more opportunities to compete abroad. Unfortunately, the limited local sports scene does not allow much room to grow. The opportunity to compete beyond the familiar faces in Singapore broadens the horizon of athletes and develops them to the next level.
“Europe is where the major competitions are. The competition can take up to two days due to the quantity and quality of participants. This is unlike Singapore, where competitions typically take half a day,” says Ryan.
Despite the importance of exposure on the international stage, opportunities to compete often go to first-tier athletes—a justifiable choice given their higher likelihood of success.
Liam explains that only two national swim meets are held annually, serving as qualifiers for major games. Yet, it’s usually the same top swimmers who secure their spots.
This leaves second-tier athletes with limited opportunities to break onto the world stage, stalling their growth. The unequal distribution of resources, favouring the best, perpetuates a cycle that deepens the divide between tiers.
Given this gap, it is inevitable that second-tier athletes must spend more resources to bridge it and reach the top.
Liam reveals that many of the top swimmers are from the best clubs, in which training programs can be costly. Prestigious swim clubs affiliated with country clubs would require membership fees too.
While grassroots clubs are available, they lack the quality of resources and training to reach the top.
This applies to fencing as well. Ryan shares that to reach the top, the high cost comes from equipment and training, where the blades and suit can cost more than a thousand dollars. Most importantly, athletes have to fork out from their own pockets to travel overseas to compete and gain points to bridge the gap to the top.
But are the high costs justified?
During his competitive fencing days, Ryan wrestled with the dilemma of justifying the time and money spent chasing the top spot. He explained that when you’re at the top, the investment feels worthwhile—results speak for themselves.
But for second-tier athletes, the outcome is uncertain. Despite countless hours of training and significant financial investment, the chances of making it to the podium remain slim. This uncertainty doesn’t just challenge their financial decisions; it weighs heavily on their confidence and motivation, making the pursuit feel like a gamble.
Some keep pouring more resources into reaching the top, regardless of uncertainty. With that uncertainty comes crushing mental pressure—the weight of personal expectations to succeed and justify the effort invested.
When he falls short in major national competitions, Ryan is left questioning why he trains so hard.
“You train so much, and you are afraid you will not do well. Or when you narrowly lose. It can be demoralising to many developing athletes that put in a lot of effort.”
This Sisyphean struggle highlights the grim reality for second-tier athletes: their relentless effort often feels futile, with hard work offering little reward.
Caught in the sunk cost fallacy, they press on, pouring more money, time, and energy into the sport despite the mounting costs far outweighing any potential benefits.
Indeed, some may taste the sweet rewards of their relentless pursuit. But for many others, the cost is far steeper—succumbing to injuries from overtraining or losing out on precious opportunities beyond the confines of their sport.
Utility and Opportunity Costs
The opportunity costs that follow the decision to bridge the gap cannot be neglected.
Academic and career excellence has always been a priority for Singaporeans. Putting in time and effort to train and compete would mean sacrificing time to study or having to reject an internship opportunity.
For both Ryan and Liam, they admit that school will be a priority, with sports on the side. It is difficult to perform at the highest level in both.
When major exams loom, they often sacrifice months of training to focus on their studies. In the Singaporean context, acing these exams offers far greater long-term rewards than excelling in sports.
Second-tier athletes often give up on their social lives, too. The disciplined training regime and the need to rest early to recover for the next morning practice means no late-night outs with friends.
It worsens when constant training without seeing results leads to burnout and disillusionment among aspiring professional athletes.
Liam explains: “Those developing athletes, including myself, will ask why we are doing this if we are not going to be like (Joseph) Schooling. It can make someone hate the sport.”
These unique struggles stem from the pragmatism of the society. There must be utility and results for what we put in effort for.
The Direct School Admission (DSA) is a perfect example of pragmatism in the sporting context. The DSA scheme allows students to use their talents to secure entry into their preferred secondary schools or junior colleges before they take major national examinations.
In an interview with TODAY, Dr Jay-Lee Nair, psychologist and practice owner of Mental Notes Singapore, explained that many parents do prioritise their children’s sporting excellence. But it’s not about grooming them into full-time athletes; it’s about using sports as a gateway to top educational institutions or scholarship opportunities.
She shared that this can lead to a negative outcome for the children training hard for a utilitarian purpose instead of pursuing it as a passion.
When it’s all about results, the utilitarian nature puts unhealthy pressure on second-tier athletes to prove their worth. The transactional nature means that when their results do not guarantee outcomes, there may be fewer incentives for the schools to accept them.
When the second-tier athletes’ efforts are “unseen” compared to their first-tier peers, the lack of opportunities despite the hard training and efforts can be demoralising.
A Sporting Chance
Reality is often cruel for those who want to make it in sports in Singapore. Even more so for second-tier athletes when success feels agonisingly close yet always just out of reach.
The outcry for more support for Singapore’s athletes has been prominent. When the top athletes are voicing their concerns, there is no doubt that second-tier athletes are facing more trouble with funding and resources.
However, the government seems to be of the opinion that athletes are receiving enough funding.
The CEO of Sport Singapore, Lim Teck Yin, said that athletes are receiving much more than they are claiming. Beyond direct financial support, Mr Lim pointed out that medical support and support in terms of sports science are provided for free.
While the government holds responsibility for funding, Mr Lim argues it shouldn’t bear the burden alone. Corporations and other organisations must step up to support athletes as well.
“The meaningfulness of the achievement of our national athletes will be enhanced only when the village gets behind them in substantive ways,” he mentioned. “When there’s an over-reliance on one party to do everything, the value of bringing people together is lost.”
It takes a village to raise a child—but that village must look beyond elite success in doing so.
This is echoed in a TODAY interview with national rower Joan Poh, who, despite her hard work, didn’t perform as expected at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
“At this point, we don’t celebrate hard work; we work so hard, but then (it’s as if) when we don’t have a medal, we don’t deserve celebration,” Poh said.
In countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, countless underdog athletes persevere, unsponsored and far from the top rankings, driven by a relentless pursuit of their dreams—even when results disappoint.
But have we, as a society, lost sight of the values sports instil in us? Have we abandoned the Olympic ideals of excellence, respect, and friendship? Have we forgotten what true sportsmanship means—the ability to inspire others through the journey, not just the victory?
When we begin to value the unique struggles of overlooked athletes, their stories become more powerful than those of perennial champions.
While Singapore’s ‘kiasu’ mentality drives success, the courage to keep fighting as the ‘second-best’ against all odds deserves our equal respect. More than anything, it’s pure passion that pushes them through, day after day.
With the closing of the Paris Olympics, it is comforting to see the nation taking incremental and encouraging steps to build “a successful sporting culture” and help a wide pool of developing athletes.
Despite bidding farewell to their chances to represent Singapore, Liam and Ryan continue to train for their sport recreationally.
“We still train because we enjoy the sports,” they said, “and the community”.
