Commentary: Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew and Yeo Jia Min may not have won Olympic medals, but they’ve brought badminton home

SAN FRANCISCO: Singapore rose passionately behind the highs and lows of its badminton players at the Paris Olympics, revelling in Loh Kean Yew becoming the first Singaporean singles player to reach the Olympic quarter-finals in two decades, to profoundly experiencing the anguish of Yeo Jia Min’s exit from the round of 16.

This energy hearkens to the national football team’s heyday competing in the Malaysia Cup. “Football’s coming home” is a well-loved slogan in English football, suggesting not only were the English among the first official rule-makers in the sport, but how the fervour of English football fans is in a league of their own.

Perhaps unbeknown to many, the Singapore Badminton Association, officially established in 1929, predates the Badminton World Federation’s 1934 founding in England. This made Singapore one of the first official badminton governing bodies in the world though Singapore was still part of British Malaya.

Moreover, the world’s most dominant and decorated badminton player in the 1930s to 1950s was none other than Singapore’s Wong Peng Soon.

Yet, a cry of “badminton’s coming home” for Singapore will carry a different but perhaps more poignant meaning today. The current crop of badminton Olympians grew up in the 2000s, during the era of the Foreign Sports Talent Scheme which focused on recruiting sports talent abroad.

In the 1990s, I was a girl who knew little about badminton but was familiar with the household name of Zarinah Abdullah.

Zarinah Abdullah was Singapore’s first female badminton Olympian in 1992 when the sport made its Olympic debut. Ranked as high as world number three in women’s singles, her 1993 SEA Games bronze medal won on home soil sparked a mini-revival of “badminton