An online diary contribution by our Team Singapore athlete, Johan specializing in the javelin Hi all, it’s me Johan again. I’m going to write about some observations that I made in the recently concluded National Juniors’ Track and Field Championships. Firstly, let me clarify this. All due respect is given to SAA and to the all the officials around. This is not a post to talk bad or “flame” or even criticize them. This is just an observation I have made on myself and also a thought of one of my fellow throwers. It is a feedback and feedbacks are meant to improve standards. Alright, now to the main topic. In competitions, athletes are expected to have seemly behavior and bear a good image of the sport, and of course, the institutes that they are representing. I think this applies to the same for the officials as well. Now I’m not saying that officials are not doing their job well. In fact, we do have to be grateful that they are around and are willing to take time off their busy schedules to help out in the meets that we have, else we will have no one officiating the events and hence, no competition will be possible. And I am indeed grateful for them. However, the problem we have is that some of the officials just want to get the job done quickly and the welfare and the benefit of athletes are not taken care of. For example, there is this particular official that rushes the athletes to get things done. This has caused my juniors to be flustered and affected their concentration on the event. The incident went like this: my juniors just reported to the arena and it happened to be their turn to have the warm up trial. The judge told them in a rather harsh tone these words: “Alright, if you’re not here and interested then forget it.” and she went on to the next competitor in line. This caused my juniors to think that their warm up trial has been forfeited and anyone who thinks this will definitely be affected adversely. Another incident is that when the athlete is preparing for his trial and is already concentrating, this judge started to shout to the athletes waiting for their turn. The shouting and calling out did not stop even when the athlete has started his run-up. This is obviously unprofessionalism. This did not happen once but according to one of my fellow throwers, happened to this athlete as well. Now I have suffered injustices from such officials in the past and have lost the gold medal because of judges not paying attention to the event that they are officiating. I believe that any athlete will not be happy with this type of incidents happening to them. Yet another case that happened was that the competing athlete was made to go get water all because the officials refused to refill the cooler, which is meant for all the athletes and even the officials. As we all can see, all officials on the field events have student helpers and they could have gotten one of them to do such chores. If the athlete went to get water for himself, then it is justifiable but the water is meant for all. This way, the athlete is also affected and energy which could have well been used in his attempts in the competition to better his performance might have been wasted. I fully understand that this is a small matter but I still stand my ground that it is not the athletes’ responsibility and that athletes should not be made to do this kinda chores, during their events. Once again, this is just some observations made and I hope that these sort of things can be improved upon as it will affect performance of our athletes and also it is what we call professionalism. We should put in our best in things that we do. We put in effort to train and to better our performances, to go out to fight for the glory of the nation but yet, there are some officials who aren’t. Truly we have to give them due respect but I also think that sometimes, respect has to be earned. Johan
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I recounted a similar incident at a local meet as well. Officials at the Long Jump pit were hustling the pri sch kids to hurry up, even shouting & hurling abuses at them. Even though they’re kids, they paid up their entrance fee just the same as everyone else. I think the least they deserve is ample time for their warm up jumps, throws etc. If there’re gonna be a huge number of entries, perhaps adjustments to event timings should be made beforehand to prevent unnecessary delays & rushing. After all, the deadline for these entries are usually days before the actual meet itself, more than enough time to sort out entries & anticipate crowds.
I dunno, i just think if we’re gonna go on & on about raising the standard of athletics in Singapore, perhaps we should consider the standard of officiating as well as that of athletes. I know most of the officials are volunteers and some take pride in their work, but sometimes at local meets, u’ll always experience some black sheep cases that will leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Well, on the flip side of the coin, I think athletes should also prepare way beforehand & report on time to prevent unnecessary delays. SO the blame should not fall squarely on officials’ shoulders.
We all have our fair share of horror official stories. Thou still ‘volunteers’, they’re all train and have taken a course on it, IAAF somemore!! They should maintain a certain professionalism as the author mentioned.
All my ‘incidences’ are with the local officials, never with the Gurkhas officials. They’ve never ‘took it out’ on us nor showed their temper. Quite the cool official. I think the local big-heads or shall i say dickhead should let the Gurkhas be in-charge of some of the events, rather than our local officials
Below my report I wanted my school to publish at redsports.com after the 1st All Comers Meet. As seen on that website it was edited a lot.
For me too, it is not so much about the blaming game more on passing on informations to maybe make it better.
>>>Finally T & F season has started, with the 1st Allcomers Meet on 18March 07 at Gombak Stadium. From the throwing events Javelin for men, Discus for men junior and Discus for woman were on the programme.
In the Javelin event the qualification was set to 36m (800g) and proved to be too high for some competitor, as only 7 made it to the final 3 throws while the rest went home without measured performance. After the first 3 throws Austin LOKE from HCI led with 48.60m, followed by CHEONG Zhaoming from NTU with 47.82m and LEE Yue Jer unattached with 45.90m. In the 4th throw Lee Yue Jer unattached improved to 49.39m and secured himself the 1st place. George TAN Hui Ming, the only competitor from CH manages to enter the final round with a throw from 36.54m but could not improve further. At the end he came in 7th and shows good potential for this year NSC.
The second throwing event Discus woman was brought in additional. The qualification was set to 20m (1kg) with only 7 participating girls. To my surprise after the first 3 throws 5 girls were send home without any performance as they did not made the qualification standard. In the T & F competition rules 180 /5 it says:
Where there are eight athletes or fewer, each athlete shall be allowed six trials. If more than one fail to achieve a valid trial during the first three rounds, such athletes shall compete in subsequent rounds before those with valid trials, in the same relative order according to the original draw.
At the end WAN Lay Chi from ITE won the competition with a distance of 46.18m, only 1m short of her own Junior Record of 47.17m set last year. Second was LAW Lining from AIS with 23.67m.
Last throwing event was discus for men junior. The qualification was set to 30m (1.75kg) with 10 boys taking part. Here too, only 4 pass the qualification standard and the rest, including the two throwers taking part from CH, were send home without recorded performance. Scott WONG HCI, only 4th after the first 3 throws, won the competition with 42.54m, followed by Andrew GANAPATHY CJC with 36.28m. The 3rd place went to Duane CHEN ACSI ( I) with 33.93m. Unfortunate for Brian LEOW from CH, his 1st throw was measured with 29.97m, but was not recorded as it was below the qualification standard set. CH’s second thrower YAN Dawei could not perform to expectation.
I hope in future qualification standards are set were it is needed and rules are laid out correctly, so that more participants have a chance to go home with a recorded performance to motivate them and get better.
After that, I just pass the results to my school and let them write the story they want.
coach Jana
I’ve had my fair share of bad officials as well. Its appalling to see the standard of officials here in Singapore as compared to those overseas. Our local officials are supposed to help us during competitions such that we can perform our best. How will our athletes ever do well if they are so unreasonable.
I once helped out at a high jump competition and the adjustment of height for the crossbar is a very tedious process. The official was too lazy to adjust accurately and one side was higher than the other. She then told me that it was alright because the athletes wouldn’t know anyway. This display left me speechless. What if it was supposed to be a record, and upon checking, the head official did not recognise the record because of one lazy official’s mistake. Taking away a record from someone is terrible!
Another incident happened recently at the national juniors. The same official mentioned above was the official in charge of long jump. It was so obvious to everyone watching at a particular competitor took off over board. But she choosed not to raise the red flag. And this caused another athlete to lose his position. How could such a thing happen.
I hope that the new officials would step up the standards and hopefully, we will see less of such instances.
An official once even asked me where’s the starting line *slaps forehead*
Sha, u should act blur and say
HUH
WAT’S A STARTING LINE?
Hey Sha! or you shall say these days, 100m is run backwards. its at the other end.
i once had an official who tried to coach me during the race. after tat race, tat person had nothing else to say to me :|….
i think saa should review their qualification marks. some of them are unreasonable given the current level of standard. it’s like asking a baby to walk before they learn how to crawl.
Thank you all for your comments. Let’s hope that SAA does something about the standards and the professionalism of our officials. Michelle is right. Even my coach says the same thing about officials helping us athletes so that we can perform at our best. This leads me to think also that performance and the standards and professionalism of officials also contribute to the results in competition.
i think it’s getting better, but still can improve