How many heard about schooling and low before they became famous?? I wonder how many more like them but were neglected by the country?? Look at schooling's story. His dad was the one supporting and funding him, not the country.
I would say We spend so much money to import foreign players and give them citozenship but neglected our own talents...
I humbly don't quite agree with this statement. IMO, I think Singapore has put in effort and money to try to groom local talents. Singapore has engaged foreign coaches, and at the same time, engaged foreign players to represent Singapore in the hope that this will expedite the building of talent process. The idea is to get locals to blend in with these FT, train with them and, hopefully groom them into top talents themselves. Isabelle (Table Tennis 3rd team player) is one good example but she did not progress much further as she ages; she also won a President Scholarship which could well changed her priorities.
Sad to say, local talents are hard to find. In my view, Singaporeans, in general, are more concern with their future than in sports, thus focus more on education; many just don't believe sports has a future.
Schooling was a very driven swimmer who wanted to excel. Therefore, the only way for him to progress is to get training overseas. Thus, his parents sent him to the US, probably under a sports scholarship scheme with the university. However, after the Olympics heroics, I believe success went into his head as he ages with all the commercials and what not so much so that he puts on a lot of weight and became non-factor swimmer who can only win Asean games medals.
LKY applied for the SBF scholarship and got it at age 13; he was not scouted naturally since he's an unknown whose talent in badminton is also an unknown. The only criteria for him to succeed in winning the scholarship was probably due to the fact that his brother is representing SG. Thus, he is very much a Singaporean having schooled from that age and serve NS. Unlike many foreign imports, he proudly pulled out the Singapore flag sewn to his t-shirt each time he win a match. That shows how much it meant to him to win for Singapore. One can only hope he keeps winning tournaments for Singapore and we, fellow Singaporeans, keeps encouraging him rather than question his allegiance.