Joseph Schooling Wins Singapore 1st Olympic Gold Medal, What If He Gets Gold Again?

Just hours ago, Singapore won its 1st Olympic Gold Medal in 100-metre butterfly. Congratulation to Singapore and Joseph Schooling for making such a historic moment!

Joseph Schooling holding his gold medal at the men's 100m butterfly victory ceremony on Aug 12
(Image Source: The Straits Times)

As a Singaporean, I am sure we are proud, and hoped that Schooling continues to get Olympic Gold Medal for Singapore.

However, based on the current incentive system, Schooling is not encouraged to do so. Under the current "Multi-Million Dollar Awards Programme", would athletes get a monetary award if they achieve consecutive gold?

The following is the award details obtained from the Singapore National Olympic Council:

Singapore MAP Awards

The award is not only taxable, but it is also mandatory for Olympic winners to give back 20% of the MAP awards to their National Sports Association for future training and development.

From the MAP awards chart above, athletes are neither encouraged to get multiple gold medals nor defend their gold medal.

This current incentive scheme clearly does not make any sense and I sincerely hope that it could be revised accordingly. In sales, there is over-achievement accelerator, where the more one achieved, the higher percentage the person would get. Some suggestions are as follows:

• Encourage athletes to achieve multiple medals in the same game
• Encourage athletes to achieve Gold medal for subsequent games, thus consecutive Gold medals should be rewarded more than Silver or Bronze
• Encourage athletes to maintain their consecutive Gold medals, for example, giving special bonus for consecutive medals

The MAP available from the Internet is from 2012 to 2015, On top of that, the wordings are very vague. I sincerely hope the MAP could be revised accordingly to support and encourage more Olympic Gold Medalists. I hope this Olympic Gold Medal is just a catalyst, with more medals to come.

Once again, thanks to Joseph Schooling and the respective support systems that made this possible.

#SchoolingWinsGold