Web Stories Wednesday, February 12

FINDING COACHES FOR WINTER SPORTS

With winter sports being a niche area in Singapore, coaches have had to be found elsewhere. 

For instance, Singapore’s short track coach, Zhao Yanzhi, who is from China, has been training the team since 2019.

Short track speed skating is a winter sport where skaters race around an oval-shaped ice track.

“Singapore’s progress in skating is very good. They will have a new ice rink in Singapore in two years time. I hope the leaders will support them and give them more assistance,” she said. 

Team Singapore’s chef de mission Feng Tianwei – a three-time table tennis Olympic medallist – acknowledged that there are challenges for a country like Singapore to excel in winter sports.

“We have thought of many ways and made various efforts to get them to go abroad for training and competitions, so that they can spend more time on the ice and snow and have more opportunities to participate in competitions.”

The national ice hockey team’s captain Daniel Chew Wee said that since the closure of the only Olympic-sized ice rink in Singapore in 2023, weekly training has to be done across the border. 

“It’s a commitment to go to Malaysia every weekend, to be in the traffic jam … The whole commute takes us six hours just to go for the one hour training,” he told CNA.

He added that the team occasionally travels to Thailand for training camps and tournaments.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who opened the Games in Harbin, called for Asia to work together in developing winter sports in the region. This is as the country has been actively positioning itself as a champion to elevate the status of such sports, which have been historically dominated by Western nations. 

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