Joscelin Yeo

Joscelin Yeo
Personal information
Surname:	Joscelin Yeo Wei Ling
Nation:	Singapore
Swimming style (s) :	Freestyle, butterfly, layers
Society:	People's Association Youth Swimming Club
Birthday:	May 2nd 1979
Place of birth:	Singapore
Size:	1.65 m
Weight:	56 kg
Medal table

Joscelin Yeo Wei Ling (born May 2, 1979 in Seoul ) is a Singaporean politician, author and former world class swimmer. Since the early 1990s, she has competed in various multinational sporting events, including the Summer Olympics and the Asian Games . However, her fame is based on her successes in various staging of the Southeast Asian Games . During this time she won bronze and silver medals in addition to 40 gold medals in 16 years and set a record with this brand by outbidding the 39 gold medals of her compatriot Patricia Chan .

Career

Joscelin Yeo Wei Ling was born on as the middle of three children to mother Yeo Lee Choo. She and her two brothers were born one year apart. She started her education at the Methodist Girls 'School in Singapore and in 1995 she moved to Australia to attend the Melbourne Girls' Grammar School. She then enrolled at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology . From 1999 she studied at the University of California in Berkeley, California and then followed her trainer there in 2001 at the University of Texas at Austin , where she majored in pedagogy at the College of Education's Department of Kinesiology and Health Education and graduated in 2003 Point Average (GPA) of 3.68 finished as one of the best of the year. For this reason, Wei Ling became the first local athlete with a yearly 30,000 US dollars doped Rhodes scholarship to study at the University of Oxford in England , which they do not cashed.

Swimming career

The Singaporean won her first small swimming tournaments at the age of seven. Two years later, they began to promote their talent with targeted training. Her youth trainer Kee Soon Bee played a significant part in her athletic development, and later said that she was very easy to train and always highly disciplined. Wei Ling always insisted that it was her own decision to commit to swimming and that she was never pushed to do so by anyone.

Wei Ling made her debut in major competitions when she was only eleven in 1990 at the Asian Games in Beijing . The public first became aware of her at the 1993 Southeast Asian Games in her hometown of Singapore, when she won nine gold medals and became not only the most successful participant in the Games, but also a national sports icon. In the following twelve years she secured at least three victories in all other editions of the Southeast Asian Games and was able to achieve third place at the Asian Games over 100 meters butterfly every eight years.

During her time in Melbourne, Wei Ling was trained by Bill Nelson and later in Berkeley by Michael Walker. She followed this when he was transferred to Austin . Over the course of her sixteen-year career, the Singaporean participated in seven Southeast Asian Games, four Asian Games, three Commonwealth Games and four Summer Olympic Games ( 1992 , 1996 , 2000 and 2004 ). It has the most Olympic participation of all Singaporean athletes and was allowed to carry the flag of Singapore as a special honor at the opening ceremony in Sydney in 2000 when the nations entered . However, she did not manage to build on her performances in the Asian competitions at all of the Olympic Games and was therefore exposed to particularly sharp criticism from the local media in 2000 and 2004.

She had originally intended to end her career after the 2005 Southeast Asian Games . There, however, she once again performed very well; she won six more gold medals and swam the 100 meter butterfly in 00: 59.91 minutes as the first Southeast Asian woman to swim under a minute. Spurred on by these successes, she decided to prepare for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing . Wei Ling still swam at the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games in 2006 , but then declared her final retirement from the sport in January 2007 due to motivation problems.

After the resignation

Wei Ling published her autobiography as early as 2004 under the title On The Move: My Career, My Story , in which she wrote about the burden of always having to live up to all expectations and explained the reasons why the public thought her to be Perceive me to be unfriendly to the media. After the end of her active career, she opened the swimming school Yeo's Aquatics together with her older brother Leonard . In 2009 President Sellapan Ramanathan appointed her a Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) in the Singapore Parliament for a period of two and a half years .

In the eighth season of the Singaporean sitcom Phua Chu Kang on Channel 5, Wei Ling last made a cameo when the protagonist swam a race against her and lost hopelessly.

Records

During her long career, Joscelin Yeo Wei Ling held numerous national records, for example over 50, 100 and 200 meters freestyle and over 200 and 400 meters medley. Of these, only those over 200 meters are still there. Yeo Wei Ling, however, still has seven record times at the Southeast Asian Games. In 2000, together with Haley Cope , Staciana Stitts and Praphalsai Minpraphal as a university team at the University of California at Berkeley, she broke the relay world record for 4 × 50 meters on the short course and improved it to 1: 49.23 minutes.

→ For more information, see the list of the best swimming times in the world over 4 × 50 meters .

Singaporean Records (1)
200 m layers	02: 16.86 min	May 23, 2004	Santa Clara
Southeast Asian Games records (7)
200 m freestyle	02: 04.01 min	1995	Chiang Mai
50 m freestyle	00: 26.23 min	1999	Bandar Seri Begawan
100 m freestyle	00: 56.05 min	1999	Bandar Seri Begawan
100 m butterfly	00: 59.91 min	2005	Los Baños
200 m layers	02: 17.17 min	1999	Bandar Seri Begawan
400 m layers	04: 51.87 min	1999	Bandar Seri Begawan
100 m chest	01: 11.36 min	1999	Bandar Seri Begawan
(As of August 2, 2009)

Awards

Wei Ling is considered the most renowned Singaporean athlete in recent decades and has received numerous awards and prizes. She was named Sportswoman of the Year in the city-state in 1993, 1995 and 1998 and Sportswoman of the Year in 1994. The fact that she did not receive the first award more often is due to a law that has now been repealed, according to which an athlete could only be awarded three times.

The daily newspaper The Straits Times listed her in 1999 in ninth position of the 50 greatest Singaporean athletes. The National Olympic Committee awarded her a special award in 2005 in recognition of her exceptional contribution to swimming in Singapore. An ethnic minority athlete who achieved a GPA of 3.2 or higher, she was also presented with the 2003 Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar Award at the University of Texas at Austin.

Web links

• Joscelin Yeo in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )