TRUST IN SINGAPORE’S CAPABILITIES
Mr Chay said Singapore’s selection shows the trust international organisations have in the country’s ability to host large-scale events, even with a short turnaround time.
Next year’s edition of the championships was originally awarded in 2019 to the Russian city of Kazan. Last February, World Aquatics relocated the event to Singapore in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This gives the city state just two years to organise the sport’s largest event. Over 2,500 athletes from 200 countries are expected to descend upon Singapore’s shores next year to compete across the six aquatic disciplines of swimming, diving, high diving, open water swimming, artistic swimming, and water polo.
Mr Chay added that hosting such events will expose Singaporeans to less common disciplines and encourage more people to pick them up.
“For example, artistic swimming and water polo are arguably not the popular sports in Southeast Asia. But if we bring the world’s best to Singapore, future generations of athletes would know that this is the standard, and this is what they should be striving for,” he said.
MORE EVENTS IN THE WORKS
Aside from aquatics, there could soon be more opportunities for other national sports associations to host international meets.
DPM Wong said in his Budget speech that many Singaporeans want to support national athletes, and the government will provide them with more platforms to do so.