Commitment is key for spexScholars as they train hard and inspire the nation

Speech by Mr Lawrence Wong, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, at the SpexScholarship Award Ceremony

Mr Lim Teck Yin, CEO of Sport Singapore 

Mr Bob Gambardella, Chief of Singapore Sports Institute

Distinguished guests, athletes, Ladies and gentlemen

1. I am happy to join you here today for the SpexScholarship Award Ceremony. The SpexScholarships were introduced last year on 20 November 2013 as “a momentous day in the history of Singapore sports”. Those are not my words, because if it’s my words then I am accused of blowing my own trumpet but these were from The Straits Times because they recognised the importance of what we were doing with this new Sports Excellence Scholarship, or spexScholarship.
   
2. And certainly if you talk to our senior athletes, the older athletes, the veterans, some of our pioneer athletes, they would tell you how different it is today compared to the past and in particular how different it is with this new spexScholarship. In fact, they tell me in their time you have to pay money out of your own pocket to play sports because there’s not a lot of support so you’ve got to use your own funds to play sports. But now, with the spexScholarship, athletes get paid to play sports and that’s what the spexScholarship is all about – about providing support for our top athletes and the support comes not just in funding but it also comes by way of sports science, sports medicine and importantly we are also looking at providing our athletes with the matching of jobs after their athletic career so that they can be assured of getting a job after they have retired from their sports.
   
3. So, it is a whole level of support to make the pursuit of sports more attractive and viable option for our athletes. And last year we had 61 spexScholars, I think some of them are here. They all did very well at the major games. We had the Commonwealth Games this year as well as the Asian Games and I’m glad to see that more than half of the medals were won by our spexScholars, so well done to all of them and, it shows that we are off on a good start with our spex programme, it is our first year but we are off on a good start.
   
4. So this year, we continue with our second round of spexScholarships, and even as we continue with the programme we are maintaining the principles of our spexScholarship programme. What are these principles? Firstly, we want it to be inclusive so the spexScholarship extends and covers our athletes whether they are able-bodied athletes or whether they are para athletes. So that’s an important first principle that we want our spexScholarships to be inclusive.
   
5. The second is that we want our spexScholarships to be open, so it’s open call to all the NSAs and all athletes to apply. Then we have a very rigorous process to select based on individual merit and it is done by an independent selection panel. And so that’s the second principle that we keep it open.
   
6. And third, an important principle is that the spexScholarship is really a mutual commitment – it’s a commitment between society and our athletes because the scholarships are funded from public funds, they are public monies. So, when we give a scholarship, we are saying that we as a society value sport, we are saying that we as a society want to set aside public funds and are prepared to make a commitment and an investment in our athletes. So that is what society wants to do. I think it is an important statement on values and priorities but at the same time, we want our athletes to make a commitment too. And they have to be committed to train hard, to meet their performance goals and targets, and hopefully through their performance in sports, rally and inspire our nation. And so it’s a mutual commitment.
   
7. On that basis, we continuously evaluate our athletes. Those who are on spexScholarships now are not guaranteed spexScholarships forever. If they do not meet up with their training commitments, there is a chance that the spex support will be revised or may be terminated. Conversely if you are not on the spexScholarship but if you train hard and you excel, you may very well apply and get funded and get more support for your training goals. And so that’s the basis in which we evaluate and on that basis we are very happy to welcome 24 spexScholars with us – six are being renewed, meaning to say they were Year 1 scholars, they had a one-year contract, they have continued to do well and their scholarships are going to be renewed for one more year, and we have 18 new spexScholars with us today. I think we should give them another round of applause to acknowledge all of them.
   
8. They come from different sports – badminton, bowling, canoeing, gymnastics, swimming, sailing, table tennis, fencing and there’s one more because we have our first cyclist Dinah Chan. So, these are our new batch of spexScholars. I welcome you to the family. I hope that awards that you are receiving today will motivate and inspire all of you to continue to train hard, to excel, to do our nation proud, and importantly inspire and be role models for your fellow athletes.
   
9. I would also want to add that the spexScholarship programme should really be seen in context because it’s only part of a broader system of support that we are putting in place for our athletes. We want to build up a whole support system to develop our athletes from very junior ranks all the way to international standards. So the spexScholarship comes in at the top tier for athletes who are aiming for the Asian Games, Olympics, or at that level of competition.
   
10. Beyond the spexScholarship programmes, we have many other support programmes to our National Sports Associations, our NSAs, we give grants and we give funding at different levels, and in particular for next year, we have a Final Push Programme where we are giving support for some 270 Team Sigapore athletes preparing for the SAG Games and Para Games next year.
    
11. So this is the system we are putting in place for High Performance Sports. Our commitment from the Ministry is that we will continue to do as much as we can to provide all the necessary support for our athletes. But the support cannot come from the Government alone, we really require all stakeholders, whether you are corporate sponsors, you may be family members of athletes, fans and supporters of athletes.
    
12. All of us need to get behind our athletes. And that is why recently, Sport Singapore ran a new video campaign – some of you may have seen it – it is about five million voices making a difference to our athletes – because every individual voice counts, and every voice matters. Collectively as a nation we may be small but we have more than five million voices and I think if we all chime in we can make a difference for our Team Singapore.
    
13. So, on that note I congratulate all our athletes once again and I hope all of you will continue to join us in support of our Team Singapore athletes. Thank you very much.