We have seen the petition for the participation of the Singapore Weiqi team earlier. As they did not start, it seems it did not work out. But what was the reaction, were there any tangible results of the petition - like a clue whether it will work out next time?

Apologies for the very late reply - I have not been following Go stuff for quite a while.

As I did not participate in the main petition efforts, I only have second-hand information. You are right to say that SNOC did not approve the Singapore Weiqi team to take part in the Asian games. There were indications from those involved that the correspondence with SNOC was stalled right at SNOC's point of contact - it appears that this person is opposed to Weiqi being part of the Asian games, and simply played delay tactics and never relayed the petition to his superiors until the application deadline is over.

However, it seems that not all is bad. Those petitioning managed to gain quite a lot of publicity, even getting themselves published in one of the local newspapers, and bringing awareness to quite a few Ministers. On the other hand, those who were petitioning were surprised at the amount of negative response in the home ground as well, but not too surprising to me - a lot of Singaporeans are getting weary of the country bringing in too much "foreign trash" (a play on "foreign talent" as often used by our government people) and giving them free citizenships just to gain a potshot at winning instant medals in sports events, rather than taking the time to grow talents at home. The intended Singapore team consists of a mix of Singapore-born players and China-born players, and those China-born came to Singapore as children, studied here, and intend to serve the two-year conscription required of Singapore male citizens, but it is difficult for outsiders to tell this difference.

Somehow, the Singapore Xiangi player managed to get himself represented at the Asian games. Apparently, the single player format seems more favourable than the team format.

In any case, Singapore fell short of its medal estimates in the 2010 Guangzhou games by about half. This is in stark contrast to Singapore's success in the 2006 Doha games.

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My homepages: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Unkx80 and http://yeefan.sg/.

Great to see you again unkx80, hope to see you around on L19 as you've been missed

Thank you for the reply, and - you're missed more on Sensei's Library