SINGAPORE – Amid the congratulatory messages and tributes that followed Olympic champion Joseph Schooling’s retirement announcement on April 2, it is also time to reflect on the invaluable lessons that the sports community can glean from his journey. One question is whether the fraternity could have done more to help the swimmer stay on top of his game.

On The Straits Times’ podcast series Hard Tackle, sports reporter Deepanraj Ganesan and assistant sports editor Rohit Brijnath speak to Singapore Aquatics president and former national swimmer Mark Chay and two-time Olympian David Lim about what Schooling’s retirement can teach us, whether we should look into the relationship between national service and athletes’ performances and crucially, who Singapore swimming’s next superstar will be.

This is an excerpt from their discussion.

Q: Is there a sense here of ‘what could have been?’ Do you feel he reached his peak too early? Could there have been better support for him to have sustained his peak?

Mark Chay: It was a very steady trajectory from 2012 all the way to 2014 and when he got his (Olympic) gold medal in 2016 and (bronze) in 2017 at the world championships. The ascent was smooth and the question I have is really about whether he was able to sustain that and whether he had the right motivations.

We have never had an Olympic champion. As a community, as a sporting culture, were we ready to embrace something like that? Which is probably why Joseph, post 2016, when he got his second deferment, decided to go back to the United States to train because, it was a more conducive environment for him, there were less distractions and probably better sparring partners.

Q: Do you feel that we let him down? Do you feel that we could have done more?

David Lim: To a certain extent, yes. We’ve never experienced an Olympic gold medallist and I don’t think we were prepared in any way to support him to sustain his form. There was a little bit of a chaotic period after he came back and nobody was taking charge, trying to say ‘look, what about 2020?’ The support could’ve been better, at least, in keeping him focused and sustaining it for another four years.

Q: What were the mistakes made and how can we do better?

Rohit Brijnath: We would be doing the whole achievement (Olympic gold) a disservice if we didn’t learn from it, if we didn’t learn from where he honestly feels where people let him down, that they could have helped him and so we plug those holes so the next person does not face these problems.

Chay: One message that got lost was this whole story about the success story of Joseph. It is also the success of May and Colin Schooling and how they’ve supported him. Through my course of being in swimming, since 2016, I’ve come across a lot of parents and they think as long as they can be a chauffeur, they can drop their kids off at swimming lessons, that’s the recipe to success. But it’s not.

May and Colin were scholars of the sport. They not only just picked their kid up and dropped him off at the pool, but they also motivated him. They made sure that he had the right nutrition. They curated what he needed to succeed. We need to do a better job in doing that. The parents really have to take an active role if they want their kids to be world champions, world beaters and succeed in the sport and not outsource parenting to the coaches.

Q: What do you feel are the lessons we should all learn going forward?

Lim: (Colin and May) have given us a blueprint of what it takes to be Olympic champion. And then we need to go through this blueprint and look at what we can do, what we can replicate. Otherwise, it is going to be hard to find our next Olympic gold medallist from swimming.

Q: Is there a conversation we should have about athletes, especially at the high performance level, when it comes to national service?

Chay: It is encouraging to hear that for Joseph, he felt that he was given adequate flexibility to train. But we also can look at different models out there. South Korea is another example of a country that has excelled in... aquatic sports. They recently came back (from the world championships) with a 200m gold medallist in the men’s freestyle (Hwang Sun-woo) and he’s exempted from national service. I’m not saying that Singapore should do that, but it’s just one of those examples that if you’ve excelled (in sport) there are different ways to serve your nation.

We also need to look at the individuals and really look at (how it can) affect the trajectory of an athlete across different sports. For swimming, it’s critical that we actually allow an athlete to go through that trajectory, especially in those two years at that physical peak to be able to do that.

But we’ve also seen some examples like Teong Tzen Wei, after his NS, he grew a little, he was a little bit more mature. But for Jonathan (Tan), that was a tragedy. He couldn’t come out and train. He was training on the weekends and he lost a little bit of flexibility as well as a lot of (water) feel. Although he did qualify for the Olympic Games after his NS, in my mind, it will always be what if he had gotten his deferment? His trajectory would probably be different. He’ll probably be in the finals of the world champs.