Sport Singapore CEO Alan Goh on rallying the nation through sports and unlocking the full potential of our athletes

While SportSG’s role is wide‑ranging, it centres around two groups. “The first is the athletes in our High Performance Sport System, where we seek to provide the best support we can to generations of athletes representing Singapore,” Goh explains. “The second is our citizenry. We have [a national blueprint for sport that is] Vision 2030—and credit goes to my predecessor and our team at SportSG—where we seek to make sports accessible to Singaporeans. So how do we do that? We build sports facilities, operate them and then run our programmes within them.”

With SportSG’s takeover of the Sports Hub, there are plans to make the venue more accessible to the broader community and drive stronger social, sporting and economic outcomes. While the sold‑out concerts of big names such as Coldplay and Taylor Swift brought economic gains to Singapore, SportSG seeks to strike a balance between commercial interests and community engagement. “You don’t want an extreme where you don’t make money and the government has to sustain its operations, and you also don’t want to just chase profits alone,” says Goh. “We want to make sure that our schools have access [to the venue] and feature on the calendar, along with community [and sporting events], and concerts.”

Next year, Singapore will host the World Aquatics Championships. This flagship event of the international swimming federation brings together the world’s best in six aquatic sports, including swimming, diving and water polo. In the bid to host more of such world championships, “we look at the type of tournaments where Team Singapore athletes can benefit from competing with the world’s best and gain valuable experience”, says Goh.

He cites how the 18‑year‑old table tennis sensation Izaac Quek gained competition experience at the 2022 World Table Tennis Singapore Smash, his first senior competition, and put the pedal to the metal at the same competition the year after. “Typically, he wouldn’t have qualified based on his then-ranking, but as hosts, Singapore received a wild card,” Goh shares. “Even though he didn’t win, Izaac had the home crowd [behind him] and progressed deep into the competition beyond expectations. Two months later, [at his Southeast Asian Games debut,] he won three gold medals in the men’s singles, doubles and team events at the 2023 Southeast Asian Games in Cambodia.”

Through the High Performance Sport System, run by its Singapore Sport Institute, the national training centre, SportSG provides the support that Team Singapore athletes need to perform at their fullest potential. “A key element of the programme is the Sport Excellence Scholarship,” says Goh, “which offers enhanced support to those with the potential to medal at the major games, so that they can train full‑time, participate in the right level of competitions overseas, and with the right coaching staff and sport science and medicine intervention—everything an elite athlete needs [to fulfil their sporting aspirations].”

Such an endeavour requires more than just government support, calling also for individuals and corporations to get behind our national athletes. “There’s a place for government funding—and it’s a sizable amount set aside for our athletes every year—but there’s also a place for individual and corporate sponsorships and partnerships,” says Goh. “We monitor every potential talent, give them every support that we can and, hopefully, cast the net wide enough so that as many as possible will keep going forward and strive to become the best in their sport.”

Read more: Paris Olympics 2024: Meet the 23 Singaporean athletes who will be competing this year

Goh’s passion for sports is apparent as he rattles off scores and data, which he attributes to being a mathematician. He played a lot of sports growing up; he represented his school for basketball, but later switched to sailing, which “I happen to be good at”, he says. Through sports, be it team or individual, “you learn different things about challenging yourself, resilience, discipline, and working in a team, winning and losing together, and supporting one another,” adds Goh, who before coming into his current role in 2023 was at the Ministry of Communications and Information, after a 26‑year career in the military. 

In sports, the Olympics is the pinnacle and winning gold, the ultimate achievement. “While medals alone don’t count for everything, they are important,” he says. “[The key to] high performance is to deliver. I’m of the view that you cannot be satisfied with ‘just try your best’. It’s about being ruthless in winning medals. You must believe that you can win.”

When it comes to Singapore’s medal hopes at the Paris 2024 Olympics, Goh says: “Ultimately, every chance is a gold‑medal chance, and we take every one we can get. As with any sport, how far our athletes can go is really about the level of competency and skills they have built up, the level of competition they are at, and the level of consistency they display to achieve results.”

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