Last week, Joseph Schooling won Singapore’s first Olympic gold medal. After the historic Olympic gold medal win, the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) made the right decision to defer Schooling's national service (NS) so that his training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will not be disrupted.
I'm fully in favor of the deferment, but I have to ask this; why only him?
Singapore sent many athletes and the issue of NS has been a bugbear to all the male Singaporean athletes. Schooling won the gold and got his deferment, but he should not be the only one to get it. There's a lot of budding male athletes in Singapore whose sporting development are derailed by NS. Surely MINDEF cannot expect all of them to win a gold medal in the Olympic Games before granting their deferment.
That's just silly. I think MINDEF should grant more deferment to male athletes. If they do that, then who knows...we might not need to wait another 50+ years before we get Singapore's second male athlete to get a gold in the Olympics.
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