This little piece from the Streats paper caught my eye. If it wasn't for my enlightenment that Tuesday which followed after the weekend, this would have gone under the radar.
Chay Weng Yew (pictured) was a former Olympian who competed in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics as a weightlifter. He had to pay his own way to the Games and had no coach there to help him in his weightlifting bid. Yet he came in 6th overall out of 22 featherweight lifters in the competition! In contrast to those sportmen and women of the swim team who went there in the recent Athen Olympics just to 'gain experience' or to 'test the waters', Weng Yew went there with a sense of wanting to achieve something more astounding - he actually went for the gold!
That's what passion is all about. Something that was 'missing' in our recent crop of sportsmen and women from the swim team. Most of them ended below their best timings. But that's not to deride them. It is this passion that most of us fail to possess appropriately in life, unlike what Weng Yew did to actually make that difference! If we go to the Olympics only to gain experience that's what we will get - enough experience to realise that we need not be there in the first place.
On the other hand, that's not what Li Jiawei, Ronald Susilo and Zhang Xueling went there for. They may not have won medals, but their valiant performances is as passionate as Weng Yew's. Considering the trouble and limitations that Weng Yew had to endure then, this may be comparable to what our sportmen and women may experience amidst the stronger competitors and the high tech gadgets that nowadays seems to doing most of the work than the sportsmen/women themselves.
It was passion too that made him a caring person. Suffering from cancer and finally succumbing to it last Saturday at age 78, he could still made sure he was at his wife's birthday dinner 10 days before he passed on. That's really passionate! If only more of us can have a splinter of that passion like Weng Yew, we can transform the world!
Rest in peace, true Singapore Olympian!
Chay Weng Yew (pictured) was a former Olympian who competed in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics as a weightlifter. He had to pay his own way to the Games and had no coach there to help him in his weightlifting bid. Yet he came in 6th overall out of 22 featherweight lifters in the competition! In contrast to those sportmen and women of the swim team who went there in the recent Athen Olympics just to 'gain experience' or to 'test the waters', Weng Yew went there with a sense of wanting to achieve something more astounding - he actually went for the gold!
That's what passion is all about. Something that was 'missing' in our recent crop of sportsmen and women from the swim team. Most of them ended below their best timings. But that's not to deride them. It is this passion that most of us fail to possess appropriately in life, unlike what Weng Yew did to actually make that difference! If we go to the Olympics only to gain experience that's what we will get - enough experience to realise that we need not be there in the first place.
On the other hand, that's not what Li Jiawei, Ronald Susilo and Zhang Xueling went there for. They may not have won medals, but their valiant performances is as passionate as Weng Yew's. Considering the trouble and limitations that Weng Yew had to endure then, this may be comparable to what our sportmen and women may experience amidst the stronger competitors and the high tech gadgets that nowadays seems to doing most of the work than the sportsmen/women themselves.
It was passion too that made him a caring person. Suffering from cancer and finally succumbing to it last Saturday at age 78, he could still made sure he was at his wife's birthday dinner 10 days before he passed on. That's really passionate! If only more of us can have a splinter of that passion like Weng Yew, we can transform the world!
Rest in peace, true Singapore Olympian!
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