Kesavan Soon
Inaugural Excellence Sports Award For Sports Person
SPORTS came naturally to 81-year-old Kesavan Soon, a rare breed of a military officer and Olympian who ranks as the youngest Singapore schoolboy to do the 100m sprints at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. Never wanting to give up on his dreams to reach the pinnacle of global sports, Soon endured multiple obstacles while in Melbourne, Australia. He
audaciously calls it a “waste of time” in his upcoming biography, due later this year. But as a sportsman-par-excellence, he pushed himself to this unbelievable dream-come-true experience. In his young mind then, as a 17-year-old Victoria School lad, Olympics mania was all about overcoming life’s obstacles and adversities.
Soon returned and joined the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) ina three-decade career, retiring as a Lieutenant-Colonel (LTC). He had his fair share of violent conflict (1963-1966) during the Konfrontasi (Confrontation). And for the next 20 years he served track and field in multiple capacities, with the longest time as a Vice President of the Singapore Amateur Athletics Association (now known as Singapore Athletics). Even in later stages of retirement, he continued his sporting fever as a sports-coordinator for the Hong Leong Group of Companies for another 25 years.
The sports-way, in the mind of the father of two, is the one thing that can unite a nation. An Olympic gold medal not only rewards an athlete’s hard work, just like (gold-medal swimmer) Joseph Schooling, but naturally a nation, helping not only to pride itself on its talented athletes but to unite in one voice and strive to develop other young talents.
Looking back, Soon’s principles remain the same: I’ve done the best as an Olympian schoolboy-sprinter. And now, at the twilight end of life, he intends to offer a no-punches-pulled book to Singaporeans: ‘Olympian & Officer’.