SINGAPORE – After successful appeals, the national men’s Under-22 football team and two-time marathon champion Soh Rui Yong are set to be part of Team Singapore’s contingent for the Dec 9-20 SEA Games in Thailand.

In a media statement on Aug 28, the Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC) said that its appeals committee met to consider additional nominations submitted by national sports associations for the biennial meet. Following the review, 218 athletes from 29 sports were approved for selection.

They will join the 762 athletes selected earlier this month, taking the total number of athletes in the Singapore contingent to 980 across 48 sports – the Republic’s largest in SEA Games history.

SNOC added in a statement: “The final contingent will be confirmed and announced closer to the Games, after the completion of the entry-by-name process set out by the SEA Games organisers.”

Despite meeting the 2hr 35min 49sec qualifying mark by clocking 2:27:49 at the Houston Marathon in January, Soh

was omitted from the initial list of athletes

released on Aug 6, along with the Young Lions.

The SNOC said then that its selection committee did not support Soh’s nomination and highlighted its commitment to sending athletes “who not only meet the performance benchmarks but also uphold the values and behaviours expected of Singapore’s national representatives”.

Soh, who won SEA Games marathon gold in 2015 and 2017, was previously not selected for the editions in 2019 and 2022, as well as the 2018 Asian Games, following clashes with SNOC.

However, he was picked for the 2023 SEA Games, where he did not compete in the marathon but won the 10,000m silver in Cambodia.

But he missed the Asian Games later that year for failure to “honour commitments which he had provided to the SNOC, including on occasions following his participation at the Cambodia 2023 SEA Games”, as the organisation noted that he had “continued to make disparaging and derisive remarks about others in the public domain”.

But on Aug 28, an SNOC spokesperson said its appeals committee is satisfied with Singapore Athletics’ (SA) assurance that Soh will uphold his responsibilities in representing the nation at the Games.

He has been nominated for the men’s marathon, 10,000m and 5,000m events.

This means there are now five athletes being considered for the men’s marathon – the others are Aaron Tan, Richard Heng, Caleb Hia and He Yong – and SA can pick only two.

It is understood that the Young Lions had missed the initial cut as they did not produce any international results that met the SNOC’s qualifying criteria of matching the third-placed finishers of the previous edition.

But since then, the team have played some friendly matches, where they were understood to have beaten Malaysia 1-0 and drawn 0-0 with the Philippines in closed-door matches. Those results, which were not made public, were used as part of the appeal.

The SNOC spokesperson said the Young Lions have been included after meeting the “benchmark”.

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