Will the table tennis saga die down?

The table tennis saga is still front and centre in the national mainstream media. For those who haven’t been following the saga, here is a brief recap.

Singapore’s number one table tennis player, Gao Ning, played his first game of the Olympics without a coach by his side. He expected a coach to be there for him, even telling the umpire one was coming along. When none showed up, he became flustered and promptly crashed out to a lower-ranked China-born Croatian player he was expected to beat comfortably. Gao Ning was in tears after the game, and claimed that he was abandoned by his team manager and head coach in favour of the women players.

One of the four national coaches had fallen ill and the remaining three were focused on the women players and another male player whose game overran and overlapped with Gao Ning’s. It transpired that nobody took the trouble to tell Gao Ning, Singapore’s Sportsman of the Year award winner, that he would have no coach by his side.

Ms Lee Bee Wah, the one-month old president of the Singapore Table Tennis Association, got upset and told reporters that she was going to replace team manager Antony Lee to hold someone accountable for this mess.

The timing of her outburst by all reasonable assessments now seems ill-judged, especially expressing it to a reporter. What did she expect when she spoke to the reporter? It was like throwing bloody meat into a tank of sharks. The current media feeding frenzy is just a logical outcome of that outburst.

Since then, copious amounts of digital and real ink have been spilled in the blogosphere and the mainstream media questioning the judgment of Lee Bee Wah. Gone now is the good feeling over Singapore’s first silver medal since independence.

What is relatively ignored are the errors of the management team. Letting your number one player go onto the court of play without a coach at the Olympics is quite unbelievable. This wasn’t an obscure, warm-up tournament. This was the world’s biggest stage. It is tough not to feel sympathy for Gao Ning regarding his complaints. Lee Bee Wah is taking all the flak now over her ill-timed comments but the abandonment of Gao Ning is a stain that cannot be easily covered up by the shiny silver medals.

What is noteworthy is how some online readers take the tenuous leap of logic and see Lee Bee Wah’s actions as a reflection of how the People’s Action Party (PAP) governs the country. She has now become a political effigy that folks want to burn down online.

So this is more than just table tennis now, with a sitting Member of Parliament (MP) involved, and the Minister of Sports Vivian Balakrishnan promising a full review and every last politician involved with sports being asked for their comments on the whole saga.

We had 25 athletes go to Beijing and return with a silver medal but now it’s just about table tennis, their MP president, their team manager, their head coach and their number one male player.

A nice juicy scandal involving a politician is more fun to write and talk about rather than just the pure sports story of the country’s first silver medal since independence.

Such is human nature.

REDpoll

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