Asia’s chase for gold at the Olympics

Shock and awe just about sum up the stunning achievement of young Singaporean swimmer Joseph Schooling at the Rio Olympics. His victory is classic David beating Goliath; he was the underdog from a tiny country that had never won an Olympic gold.

What made it sweeter and remarkable is that Schooling beat the mightiest, most decorated Olympian in history—the American Michael Phelps who has won 23 gold medals—and set an impressive new record of 50.39 seconds for the 100-meter butterfly event.

When news of Singapore’s first gold medal broke, it quickly overtook other stories emanating from Rio and became the talk of the world.

It eclipsed its Asean neighbors’ own Olympic gold successes—Vietnam’s shooter Hoang Xuan Vinh in the 10m air pistol competition and Thailand’s weightlifters Sopita Tanasan and Sukanya Srisurat in their individual weight classes—and certainly overshadowed Malaysian diving duo Pandelela Rinong and Cheong Jun Hoong’s silver in the women’s synchronized 10m platform diving.

All are no small feats, but there is a total of 28 sports in the Games, not counting those with multiple disciplines, and the most popular ones for a global audience are gymnastics, track and field, and swimming, according to topendsports.com.

Among Asian nations competing in the Games, China and Japan are traditionally strong contenders in gymnastics and swimming, although the Chinese gymnasts seem to be doing poorly this time around.

For most other Asian competitors, the sports they excel in tend to be the ones with less mass appeal like archery, shooting, judo, badminton and, for some strange reason, women’s weightlifting.

Apart from the Thais, Taiwanese, Filipino and Indonesian female weightlifters have also won medals for their countries.

China remains the sporting powerhouse of Asia, sending its largest delegation of 416 athletes to Rio this year. But they have failed to defend their gold medals in sports they used to dominate, like badminton and diving.

As for the glamorous track and field events, there doesn’t seem to be any Asian athlete who can challenge the likes of Usain Bolt.

Meanwhile, the other Asian powerhouse, India, with the second largest population in the world, has never done well at the Olympics. India also sent its biggest ever contingent of 118 athletes, but so far, it has not won a single medal.

Winning an Olympic gold medal is the Holy Grail of sports. The pomp that surrounds the Games gives the gold medallists unparalleled honor and prestige. And the nations they represent go into collective convulsions of ecstasy and nationalistic joy.

That’s why many nations pour millions into sports programs to nurture and train promising talents, and offer great financial rewards to successful Olympians.

Schooling will get S$1M from the Singapore government for his gold medal. Vietnam’s Hoang reportedly will receive US$100,000—a figure, according to AFP, that is nearly 50 times greater than the country’s average national income of around US$2,100.

Malaysia, which is seeing its best ever performance in Rio, thanks to its badminton players and divers, rewards its successful athletes handsomely under its National Sports Council incentive scheme. For a gold, the winner will receive RM1M and a monthly pension of RM5,000; for a silver, RM600,000 and a monthly pension of RM3,000; and for a bronze, RM100,000 and a monthly pension of RM2,000.

Taiwan, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand have similar monetary reward schemes. North Korea uses a carrot-and-stick scheme: huge rewards for medal winners and hard labor for the failed ones.

Several western countries, including the United States, France, Russia and Germany, have the same financial bait, but at a lower rate.

Does it work?

The Technology Policy Institute looked for a correlation and was mindful of variables like country size and income, “since those are surely the biggest predictor of how many medals a country will win: more populous countries are more likely to have that rare human who is physically built and mentally able to become an Olympic athlete, while richer countries are more likely to be able to invest in training those people.”

The researchers found no correlation between monetary payments and medals and said it was not surprising in some countries. In the United States, for example, a US$25,000 cash award would be dwarfed by million-dollar endorsement contracts for the athlete.

The researchers also set out to see if the results would be different for countries with lower opportunities for endorsements. Their conclusion: “Overall, the evidence suggests that these payments don’t increase the medal count” either.

Rather, countries that do well are those with a longstanding sporting culture that values and nurtures their athletes long before they qualify for the Olympics. This is evident in Western societies where athletes, even at the college level, are feted and idolized. In Asia, however, the emphasis is more on book learning and earning prestigious degrees.

The BBC quotes Indian Olympic Association head Narayana Ramachandran as saying that India’s sorry performance is more than just a shortage of cash or organization. “Sport has always taken a back seat vis-à-vis education. Most Indian families would prefer their children became dentists or accountants than Olympians,” he says.

But that attitude is surely changing as more Asian athletes go professional and are able to make a good living.

In Malaysia, its most popular sportsman, badminton star Lee Chong Wei who is expected to net a Rio gold, is highly successful with a number of endorsements under his belt.

For now, it is still the Western countries that dominate the Olympic medal tally table. But it’s only a matter of time before more Asian nations, once no-hopers at the Games, rise up the charts.

It’s already started. The Rio Games will go down in history as a watershed for Asean, with two member states—Singapore and Vietnam—winning their first gold medals. May it be so for Malaysia, too.

June H.L. Wong was group chief editor of The Star Media Group Malaysia and its current chief operating officer for content development.