After prolonged absence, Singapore's water polo team and runner Soh Rui Yong are ready for their SEA Games comeback

SINGAPORE: For Arsenal’s 2003-04 team, it was 49 matches. For the Boston Celtics, it stretched eight championships. And for the Singapore men’s water polo team, it spanned 27 tournaments.

Twenty-seven SEA Games, 52 years, 0 losses. Then came the 2019 SEA Games.

“There was huge disappointment for sure. I think the people that were hardest on us was actually ourselves,” team captain Lee Kai Yang told CNA.

The team finished with a bronze after ending the Games with two wins, a draw and a 7-5 defeat at the hands of champions Indonesia.

“I think the biggest disappointment for me was looking at my family, my fiancee (who was) at the time my girlfriend, and knowing that those individuals sacrificed the same amount or if not more, just to let me chase this passion of mine. And then the outcome did not end in our favour," recalled Lee.

Losing hurt, but in the pain was a lesson. 

“We played in a number of competitions leading up to the SEA Games, and we were playing well. And we knew that we should have paid better than what we played. But I think that therein lies the biggest lesson in sports - the outcome is never guaranteed," he said.

Runner Soh Rui Yong knows all too well the uncertainty that comes with sport, after years of exile from the national fold.

Last month, it was announced the 31-year-old will be back torepresent Singapore at the upcoming SEA Games after a successful appeal. It has been six years since Soh competed at the regional meet. He last featured at the 2017 Games in Malaysia where he won gold in the marathon.

This Games will provide a “nice closure” after several years of not being selected by the Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC), Soh told CNA.

In January, Soh was not named in SNOC’s initial list of 517