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VIENTIANE - Singapore's athletics team have been in the spotlight over the last few days.
With only two gold medals and one silver, the Singapore Athletic Association (SAA) have come under fire for the lacklustre performance at the 25th SEA Games, which came to an end here on Friday.
With seven golds on offer, Singapore's 19-strong badminton squad could only return home with one silver (women's doubles) and two bronze medals (men's and women's team events) .
At the 2003 SEA Games in Hanoi, the women's team clinched gold and two years later, won the silver.
In 2007, the shuttlers bagged four silvers (men's and women's team, men's singles, men's doubles) and two bronze medals (women's doubles and mixed doubles).
This time only the women's doubles pair of Shinta Mulia Sari and Yao Lei qualified for an individual final, bowing out 2-0 to Malaysian top seeds Chin Ee Hui and Wong Pei Tty in the battle for gold.
At a media appreciation lunch on Friday, Team Singapore's chef-de-mission Jessie Phua stressed that some of the national sports associations (NSA) needed to go back to the drawing board.
"Some of the NSAs have to do a review of where the team matches up to their peers in the region," she told MediaCorp.
"Rather than fielding their old war horses, I urge them to look at fast tracking their athletes.
"Badminton and the table tennis men's team have to do their due diligence. It is clear that dexterity and swiftness of reflexes is so crucial. Most of our Asean neighbours are progressing at incredible rates. The NSAs must realise that the bar has been raised."
With top teams like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand competing for honours in badminton at the Games, Phua called for an evaluation of the sport's development programme.
Said Phua, who is also president of the Singapore Bowling Federation: "You are in the big league, so you better match up ... I urge them to look at their feeder system and make sure they work hard at it."
In an interview with MediaCorp, team manager Chew Keet Hou stressed that the Singapore Badminton Association (SBA) are in the process of rebuilding their men's and women's teams.
"This year, our strength is not as before, and through this SEA Games we recognise that there is a gap between Derek (Wong) and Ashton (Chen) and the top players here, but the promising sign is that they performed well against Vietnam in the men's team quarter-finals," he said.
"The women's team also gave a good fight against a strong Indonesian team."
The badminton team were weakened by injuries to Hendri Kurniawan and women's singles player Xing Aiying during the competition.
Kendrick Lee, the men's singles silver medallist from 2007, had also withdrawn from the squad due to studies.
Proper training and competition plans are required for the shuttlers, and Chew said: "Now we need to focus our development on our young players, especially in the women's team.
"Hopefully, in the next three to four years, they will be able to surpass players like seniors (Li) Yujia and (Jiang) Yanmei." -TODAY
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