One World, One dream alright, but there is also only one passport. In the article I had posted, it was said that the representatives of the various nations during the Olympic Games were not necessarily from the nations that they represented. Notably, many of the competitors for the table tennis events were born in China before going to the other countries. However, does this issue of nationality really matter? It is after all one world with one common dream.
The first key point that the opposing stand can bring up is concerning a fundamental benefit of the Olympic Games. When one's national team is participating in an Olympic event, one will instinctively feel that sense of national pride and spur the team on with words of encouragement. That in itself promotes national pride. Then, when the country wins a medal at the games, every citizen of the state would feel more patriotic towards the land. Thus, Olympic events can promote national identity. However, when naturalised foreigners represent a country, would the impact be the same in national pride? My answer to that is that for a tiny speck on the map like Singapore, even being represented in the first place is a thing to be proud of. So what if they are foreigners? It only goes to show that they came here because it was a better place for them to live and exhibit their talents and potential; and that's why they represented us, which helped them to show case their talents to the whole world, beside making the country that they adopted to be proud of.
Also, there is the issue of their citizenship. Some say, they might take up citizenship in a new country but their loyalty would only remain with their home country. It is of course, a valid argument. It is the same concept as why the Singapore Government relies more on a homegrown citizen army than on a full time full force mercenary army--in times of economic hardship or when they are unwilling to fight, the latter will simply desert the employers. However this cannot be likened to foreign athletes. In this case, the athletes are not like the mercenary army can potentially be. Not that we were experiencing economic hardship, but they fought a long and hard battle with the top seeds from China and remained true to Singapore all the way. They did not give the match away to China just because they were born there. They fought fair and square, and the better team simply beat the other. Also another rebuttal to the point will be that in a country like Singapore, dual citizenship is not allowed. So the athletes had to take the hard decision to drop the citizenship of their motherland before taking up our citizenship whole-hearted. Since they did that, it only goes to show that these athletes really want to be part of us.
Generally speaking, the world today is border-less. People are going and coming everywhere because they are allowed to do so. This has allowed for rapid globalization. That is the reason Singapore remains alive today. In one generation the population of natives (who are not really natives because their predecessors were immigrants themselves to some once unknown swamp-cum-fishing-village) could halve because of the slumping birth rate, but a constant influx of foreigners should stabilise the population. Therefore by nature of the state, it is alright if it is represented by foreigners. If we ourselves were once immigrants, why target them? At least now we know how the Orang Lauts would have felt in the 1820s!
The Olympics should now shift the focus more towards the individual. In this virtually border-less world, the individual should receive more importance than the nation, because the nation no longer truly represents a collective identity of people. Like I said, if they are going and coming all over the place, then it will be difficult to group a type of people as belonging to one nation. For example, if Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps both came to represent Singapore, it does not necessarily say that Singapore is a sporting powerhouse. So the Olympics should now change the focus to the individual.
Besides, nationality should not be an issue. We are one common family of human beings with a common dream of achieving peace, prosperity and progress. The only true passport we have that reflects of us is not our national identity, but our human existence.
Therefore, I personally, feel that it does not matter who represents which country in the Olympic Games, but what matters is that the athletes are given the chance to up their game, and for many, allowed to fulfill their dreams of competing in the global arena.
PS: On a side note, if we really want true blue Singaporeans in the Olympics, we should put more emphasis on shooting because after all NS has trained thousands of us to shoot with precision over the years.
THE END
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The Olympic Passport (article for reference)
The Olympic passport
The number of foreign-born athletes competing in the Games has raised eyebrows. But in a borderless world, why shouldn't sports be just as globalised?
By Tan Dawn Wei, expat eye
This year's Olympic table tennis matches will be remembered as much for some formidable play as a battle amojng the Chinese.
That's the Chinese-Singaporean, Chinese-French, Chinese-Austrian, Chinese-American, Chinese-Spaniard, Chinese-Australian, Chinese- German, Chinese-Polish, Chinese Canadian, Chinese-Korean, Chinese-Hong Konger, Chinese-Luxembourger, Chinese-Dutch, Chinese- Dominican, Chinese-Croatian and Chinese-Congolese.
The oft-bandied phrase, 'the Chinese are everywhere', is nothing if not glaringly apparent at the Beijing table tennis games.
Of the 78 women paddlers at this year's Olympics, 35 are China- born. Only three wear China's red and yellow colours.
Past Olympic Games have borne witness to such ironic scenes before, but quite possibly none more than in the Chinese capital.
And it's not just at the ping-pong table.
When the members of the press descended on Chaoyang Park for what they thought would be a politically charged beach volleyball match between Georgia and Russia after the latter sent tanks into the former's territory, they saw none of that from the Brazilian players representing Georgia.
Then, there were the New Zealand-born triathlete brothers who competed against each other: one, Shane Reed, doing it for his home country, the other, Matt, for the United States.
Armenian wrestler Ara Abrahamian won a bronze medal for Sweden (which he was later stripped of for throwing it on the mat); Jamaican Germaine Mason gave Great Britain a silver and its first high-jump medal since 1996; and Moroccan Rashid Ramzi ran to a gold in the 1,500m race for Bahrain.
Of course, the table tennis trio of Li Jiawei, Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei - former Chinese, now Singaporeans - broke this country's dry Olympic medal spell of 48 years with a team silver.
The United States also fielded a brigade of migrants - 36 from 28 countries - this year: among them, Lopez Lomong, the Sudanese-born American flag-bearer at the opening ceremony, plus a South African-born tennis player, a Georgian archer, a Polish kayaker, Chinese table tennis players and a world champion Kenyan distance runner.
All this trading of nationalities has led to much criticism and derision from purists, stakeholders and even the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
It is one thing to find a new home as a conventional migrant, but another to be bought over purely for your athletic talents.
No one raised a stink when Nastia Liukin, a Russian immigrant, won a gold medal in individual all-round gymnastics for the US a week ago.
She had moved to New Orleans when she was 21/2 years old with her family after the Soviet Union broke up and is as American as apple pie.
But Americans have been far less kind to two other of its basketball players who crossed over from the US to Russia.
Becky Hammon and J.R. Holden have had to defend themselves repeatedly from being labelled 'traitors' when they donned Russian colours at this year's Games.
Hammon, who wasn't drafted into the US national team, had said: 'I still love my country - it doesn't really have anything to do with that. I just want to play basketball.'
The Olympics, it seems, are no longer about patriotism, national identity or making your motherland proud.
Instead, it has become what The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Jeff Schultz calls 'an exercise in passport free agency'.
Fingers have been wagging in the direction of rich Middle Eastern countries, which have thrown wads of cash at poor African athletes in a bid for national glory.
Former world steeplechase champion Stephen Cherono, who traded his Kenyan jersey for a Qatari one and adopted a new name, Saif Saaeed Shaheen, for a lifetime salary of US$1,000 (S$1,400) a month, is just one of them.
There have been enough cases of Cheronos to make the IOC take action: It ruled in 2002 that athletes must wait three years from receiving their new citizenship papers before they can compete for their adoptive country - unless their home country waives this deadline.
IOC president Jacques Rogge said the committee introduced the rule to prevent athletes from 'changing nationality for purely financial reasons'.
'It is a worrying situation emerging in sport,' he had remarked.
Likewise, the International Table Tennis Federation has also put its foot down. After the Olympics, those over the age of 21 will be banned from pledging allegiance to another country.
Those between 18 and 20 will have to wait seven years before they can make the jump.
Other sports federations are also likely to follow suit.
But there is something to be said about this globalisation of sports.
When the world is increasingly becoming a borderless one, why should the field of sports be any different? When people have traditionally migrated in search of a better life, more equitable opportunities and greater challenges, why can't sportsmen do the same?
Lawyer and economist Ian Ayres argued for flexibility in a New York Times column last Thursday, citing Article 6 in the Olympic Charter which states that the Games are competitions between athletes and not countries.
'Imagine a world where the best athletes are able to compete. This is definitely not the current Olympic system. The country quota system keeps many of the best athletes home,' he wrote.
'Letting athletes choose their national teams is a simple way of fulfilling this powerful idea,' he said of the Olympic Charter.
If not for Singapore's Foreign Sports Talent (FST) scheme, introduced in 1993 to fast-track promising foreign athletes to Singapore citizenship, the Republic's three new Olympic silver medallists would quite likely never have had the opportunity to take part in any Games.
The debate over Singapore's reliance on these imported athletes has been going on for the past decade, and the sports fraternity has reiterated the importance of these achievers to the development of sports here.
Much cynicism still hangs in the air - at coffee shops and on online forums - that Singapore didn't really win at the Olympics since all three paddlers were China-born.
Nowhere else, it seems, do you witness such disenchantment simply because the athletes bringing home the medals aren't native.
Perhaps it is because the table tennis win is Singapore's only one at these Games. Elsewhere, there could be less scrutiny when foreign-born and native athletes both come home with an assortment of medals.
But unlike Hammon, Holden and many others who hold two passports, Singapore's lack of a dual citizenship policy means foreign-born athletes have to give up one for another.
And surely that will qualify them as Singaporeans in more ways than one. Chinese-Singaporeans.
The number of foreign-born athletes competing in the Games has raised eyebrows. But in a borderless world, why shouldn't sports be just as globalised?
By Tan Dawn Wei, expat eye
This year's Olympic table tennis matches will be remembered as much for some formidable play as a battle amojng the Chinese.
That's the Chinese-Singaporean, Chinese-French, Chinese-Austrian, Chinese-American, Chinese-Spaniard, Chinese-Australian, Chinese- German, Chinese-Polish, Chinese Canadian, Chinese-Korean, Chinese-Hong Konger, Chinese-Luxembourger, Chinese-Dutch, Chinese- Dominican, Chinese-Croatian and Chinese-Congolese.
The oft-bandied phrase, 'the Chinese are everywhere', is nothing if not glaringly apparent at the Beijing table tennis games.
Of the 78 women paddlers at this year's Olympics, 35 are China- born. Only three wear China's red and yellow colours.
Past Olympic Games have borne witness to such ironic scenes before, but quite possibly none more than in the Chinese capital.
And it's not just at the ping-pong table.
When the members of the press descended on Chaoyang Park for what they thought would be a politically charged beach volleyball match between Georgia and Russia after the latter sent tanks into the former's territory, they saw none of that from the Brazilian players representing Georgia.
Then, there were the New Zealand-born triathlete brothers who competed against each other: one, Shane Reed, doing it for his home country, the other, Matt, for the United States.
Armenian wrestler Ara Abrahamian won a bronze medal for Sweden (which he was later stripped of for throwing it on the mat); Jamaican Germaine Mason gave Great Britain a silver and its first high-jump medal since 1996; and Moroccan Rashid Ramzi ran to a gold in the 1,500m race for Bahrain.
Of course, the table tennis trio of Li Jiawei, Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei - former Chinese, now Singaporeans - broke this country's dry Olympic medal spell of 48 years with a team silver.
The United States also fielded a brigade of migrants - 36 from 28 countries - this year: among them, Lopez Lomong, the Sudanese-born American flag-bearer at the opening ceremony, plus a South African-born tennis player, a Georgian archer, a Polish kayaker, Chinese table tennis players and a world champion Kenyan distance runner.
All this trading of nationalities has led to much criticism and derision from purists, stakeholders and even the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
It is one thing to find a new home as a conventional migrant, but another to be bought over purely for your athletic talents.
No one raised a stink when Nastia Liukin, a Russian immigrant, won a gold medal in individual all-round gymnastics for the US a week ago.
She had moved to New Orleans when she was 21/2 years old with her family after the Soviet Union broke up and is as American as apple pie.
But Americans have been far less kind to two other of its basketball players who crossed over from the US to Russia.
Becky Hammon and J.R. Holden have had to defend themselves repeatedly from being labelled 'traitors' when they donned Russian colours at this year's Games.
Hammon, who wasn't drafted into the US national team, had said: 'I still love my country - it doesn't really have anything to do with that. I just want to play basketball.'
The Olympics, it seems, are no longer about patriotism, national identity or making your motherland proud.
Instead, it has become what The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Jeff Schultz calls 'an exercise in passport free agency'.
Fingers have been wagging in the direction of rich Middle Eastern countries, which have thrown wads of cash at poor African athletes in a bid for national glory.
Former world steeplechase champion Stephen Cherono, who traded his Kenyan jersey for a Qatari one and adopted a new name, Saif Saaeed Shaheen, for a lifetime salary of US$1,000 (S$1,400) a month, is just one of them.
There have been enough cases of Cheronos to make the IOC take action: It ruled in 2002 that athletes must wait three years from receiving their new citizenship papers before they can compete for their adoptive country - unless their home country waives this deadline.
IOC president Jacques Rogge said the committee introduced the rule to prevent athletes from 'changing nationality for purely financial reasons'.
'It is a worrying situation emerging in sport,' he had remarked.
Likewise, the International Table Tennis Federation has also put its foot down. After the Olympics, those over the age of 21 will be banned from pledging allegiance to another country.
Those between 18 and 20 will have to wait seven years before they can make the jump.
Other sports federations are also likely to follow suit.
But there is something to be said about this globalisation of sports.
When the world is increasingly becoming a borderless one, why should the field of sports be any different? When people have traditionally migrated in search of a better life, more equitable opportunities and greater challenges, why can't sportsmen do the same?
Lawyer and economist Ian Ayres argued for flexibility in a New York Times column last Thursday, citing Article 6 in the Olympic Charter which states that the Games are competitions between athletes and not countries.
'Imagine a world where the best athletes are able to compete. This is definitely not the current Olympic system. The country quota system keeps many of the best athletes home,' he wrote.
'Letting athletes choose their national teams is a simple way of fulfilling this powerful idea,' he said of the Olympic Charter.
If not for Singapore's Foreign Sports Talent (FST) scheme, introduced in 1993 to fast-track promising foreign athletes to Singapore citizenship, the Republic's three new Olympic silver medallists would quite likely never have had the opportunity to take part in any Games.
The debate over Singapore's reliance on these imported athletes has been going on for the past decade, and the sports fraternity has reiterated the importance of these achievers to the development of sports here.
Much cynicism still hangs in the air - at coffee shops and on online forums - that Singapore didn't really win at the Olympics since all three paddlers were China-born.
Nowhere else, it seems, do you witness such disenchantment simply because the athletes bringing home the medals aren't native.
Perhaps it is because the table tennis win is Singapore's only one at these Games. Elsewhere, there could be less scrutiny when foreign-born and native athletes both come home with an assortment of medals.
But unlike Hammon, Holden and many others who hold two passports, Singapore's lack of a dual citizenship policy means foreign-born athletes have to give up one for another.
And surely that will qualify them as Singaporeans in more ways than one. Chinese-Singaporeans.
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