ABSTRACT
This essay is an analysis of the reality of Singapore’s Asian Games’ aspirations and achievements and the responses to the challenges it faced in Guangzhou in 2010. How did ‘Team Singapore’ respond to the challenges that they met at what represented a crossroad in their sporting history at which they met the vehicle carrying China’s sporting and soft power products. How did they react and were the effort, industry, hyperbole and not insignificant government financial outlay and policy initiatives worth it? The analysis constitutes a critique of articles relating to the Guangzhou Asian Games of 2010 that appeared in the three major English language newspapers in Singapore, The Straits Times, The Sunday Times and The New Paper before, during and after the Games. From the analysis, major themes emerged which characterised the environment of elite sport in Singapore and revealed that it is very much part of the nation’s inimitable social, political and diplomatic schema; sport, as with all other socio-cultural institutions in Singapore, has not and does not evolve accidentally.
