Singapore Olympic Foundation-Peter Lim Scholarship 2026 Award Ceremony

Mr Ng Ser Miang, Chairman, Singapore Olympic Foundation and Member, International Olympic Committee

Mrs Sherry Lim,

Mr Kiat Lim, Director, Singapore Olympic Foundation, Lim Family Foundation

Mr Mark Chay, Sec-Gen Singapore National Olympic Council,

Our special guest, Ms Shanti Pereira

Distinguished guests,

Parents and teachers,

And most importantly, our scholarship recipients,

A very good afternoon to all of you.

It Takes a Community to Nurture Sporting Dreams

1.  We are gathered here today to recognise our scholarship recipients - talented athletes with the determination and belief to go further.

2. And we are recognising not just your sporting excellence, but also celebrating your character, perseverance, and the pursuit of something greater than yourselves.

3. Ladies and gentlemen, shall we give our scholarship recipients a big round of applause please.

4. To our scholarship recipients, today marks an important milestone in your journey.  Each of you has demonstrated not only talent, but also the discipline, resilience, and the determination to go beyond your limits.

5. These qualities are what defines athletes, and more importantly, what shapes strong individuals.

6. Sport has a unique ability to teach us life lessons that extend far beyond the field of play.

7. We learn both in victory and in defeat, and how to stay the course when progress seems slow, and how to rise again after a fall. These lessons build character, and character builds our nation.

8. This scholarship is more than financial support. It is our vote of confidence in your potential – not just as athletes, but as role models and future leaders. With this support comes responsibility – to strive for excellence, to uphold integrity, and inspire those around you.

9. Our special guest Shanti Pereira, an SOF-Peter Lim Scholarship recipient in 2014 and 2015 just like you, is one such role model. She went on to become an Olympian, and Asian and SEA Games champion.  

10. I am sure she has inspired many of you here, and I hope many of you will go on to become an inspiration for many others.

Strengthening Singapore’s High Performance Sports Ecosystem

11. We are grateful for the partnership with the SOF-Peter Lim Scholarship, and such public-private partnerships are a crucial part of our effort to nurture every athlete.

12. And as you progress to higher levels of competition, the Government is fully committed to help you achieve your full sporting potential.

13. Earlier this year, we established Sport Excellence Singapore, or SpexSG, to bring our key sport entities together, so we can have a seamless, end-to-end pathway for our athletes. From youth development to post-sport career planning.

14. We are also supporting more of you to chase your dreams. At the recent spexAthlete Investiture, we welcomed our largest-ever cohort of 256 athletes – a 50% increase over last year - under the spexScholarship and spexPotential programmes.

15. Beyond that, we will also support an additional 200 Team Singapore athletes to take on higher-intensity, full-time equivalent training.

16. And to help you perform better, we are also deepening our Sport Science, Sport Medicine, and Athlete Life Management capabilities under SpexSG. By 2029, we will grow our specialist workforce by about 40% to 110 specialists.

17. We also look forward to the development of Home of Team Singapore in Kallang, where training facilities, sports science and medicine facilities, boarding and academic facilities, will all come together with our National Sports Associations to be integrated in a single location.

18. Our vision is that we’ll take care of the rest so that all of you can achieve your best.

Conclusion

19. At this juncture, I want to thank the Singapore Olympic Foundation, the Singapore National Olympic Council, and the Peter Lim Foundation for their longstanding support for young athletes in Singapore.

    1. Since its launch in 2011, the SOF-Peter Lim Scholarship has enabled generations of young Singaporeans to chase their sporting ambitions.

    2. This year, more than 400 student-athletes from over 100 schools are recipients.

    3. This is what philanthropy, community and sport can achieve together.

20. I want to also thank the parents, teachers, coaches and mentors gathered here today.

    1. Thank you for the countless hours of guidance and support you’ve given to our athletes.

    2. Whether it is waking up before dawn for training, helping athletes balance school and sport, or standing by them through setbacks and victories, nothing goes unnoticed.

    3. Today’s achievements belong to all of you as much as they belong to our recipients.

21. Athletes, can we give all your parents, coaches, teachers friends and family a big round of applause please.

22. Finally, congratulations once again to all scholarship recipients.

23. Continue to train hard to reach your fullest sporting potential and inspire many more Singaporeans, and we will be with you every step of the way.

24. Thank you.