SK Ramachandra
IHFS Excellence Award For Sports Official
Chandra was nominated and won the Coach of the Year 87 for his unstinting commitment to the sport of bodybuilding. Chandra, as he is affectionately known, has been the architect behind some of the nation’s best bodybuilders Rohmat Juraimi, Moh Teck Hin and Fatholomein Ali to name just a few and he was the coach since 1972. He fell in love with the sport, started as a body-builder and won the Mr Singapore Title in1951 and never looked back. In the early 1960s, the author was one of Chandra’s trainee bodybuilder and underwent the strict regime of bodybuilding.
It was at the Evergreen Body Building club where they got together to train and one the members Tan Howe Liang, who won a silver in the 1960 Rome Olympic. It was the only medal Singapore ever received in an Olympics and the record remained for another 49 years before Singapore received medals in table-tennis.
When Chandra was voted the Coach of the Year 1987 it was also the first time that the sport of bodybuilding had won the prestigious Coach of the Year accolade.
That same year Chandra’s bodybuilding contingent brought back 6 golds 1 silver and a bronze medal from the Mr Asia competition held in Malacca, Malaysia.
Later that year in September, bodybuilding made its debut at the SEA Games in Jakarta whereby Singapore’s contingent of bodybuilders attained 3 golds and 2 silvers, a commendable performance by Coach Chandra’s team and a feather in the cap for the local bodybuilding fraternity. It was that stellar SEA Games performance that earned Chandra the Coach of the Year award, an achievement that he had not expected to achieve even though he was thoroughly deserving of it for his two decade long service to the sport of bodybuilding in the Republic.
Chandra has handed over the coaching rein to fellow bodybuilder Fatholomein Ali after having coached and inspired the team to a record haul of 60 gold, silver and bronze medals at the World, Asian and South-East Asian games. His achievements have stood the test time for more than three decades.