Singapore Gymnastics is proud of the entire gymnastics community who have stayed engaged with gymnastics through what has been another challenging year facing restrictions.

In January 2021, Singapore Gymnastics distributed the SG Club Child Safe Online Module on as part of Club Affiliation 2021. The SG Club Child Safe online module was designed to share the best practices followed by top Child Safety industry leaders and CoachSG Safe Sport agency. It was to create organisational awareness of abuse within Singapore’s local community, starting with club owners, managers and administrators.

Since the release of the SG Child Safe Online Module, Singapore Gymnastics will continue to work closely with CoachSG and the Safe Sport Taskforce to ensure all Singapore Gymnastics Technical members and clubs are able to access the CoachSG Understanding Safe Sport Online Module for both coaches and sport administrators to ensure a culture of trust, safety and empowerment within this sport.

In February, Singapore Gymnastics test trialled and held its first event in hybrid mode since the COVID-19 pandemic with preventive measures in place to ensure a safe, hygienic and comfortable environment for athletes, judges, volunteers and staff.

This led to subsequent successful conclusion of the 12^th National Championship in March which saw over 1,050 gymnast athletes competing across Men’s Artistic Gymnastics, Women’s Artistic Gymnastics, Rhythmic Gymnastics as well as Trampolining across all levels.

In conjunction with the National Championship, the Gym Challenge saw near 30 teams through the door, rounding up to 250 gymnasts with their coaches who came and challenged themselves at 8 different stations across the floor, beams, bars and hand apparatuses.

At the same time we would like to express our gratitude and appreciation to our volunteers for their tireless hard work, dedication and spirit and their ongoing commitment as we move forward to provide a safe and quality event for our athletes.

The start of April saw the collaboration of Singapore Gymnastics and Gymnastics Queensland to provide a series of online Professional Development workshops to our technical members. The topics ranges from Gymnastics for All (GfA), Inclusion, KinderGym to Men’s and Women’s Gymnastics discipline-specific coaching strategies and skills development.

The 2021 Club Congress was held in April including; Frank Sahlein from 3^rd Level Consulting bringing global perspectives and highlighting the total impact revolving around staff development, John Mitchell from Delta Gymnastics shared how Culture underpins alignment and helps clubs achieve to their potential and how it was the secret sauce to success, Matthew Scholes from Positive Sports Coaching who came and shared about Positive Parent Interaction with our club managers and administrators and lastly the CoachSG Safe Sport Task Force give a presentation on Understanding Safe Sport for Sport Administrators in our sport of Gymnastics.

Coach development is an area Singapore Gymnastics is passionate about and have put in a lot of work to build up the education framework and content. Singapore Gymnastics ran its first Learning Facilitator training workshop in late April with 14 Learning Facilitators from all 5 gymnastics disciplines coming together to share ideas, solve problems with peers and to practise facilitating the learning of others. These Learning Facilitators have then gone on to take the lead in the Intermediate Coaching courses later in July.

Beginning June, Singapore Gymnastics organised a campaign leading up to the Olympics in which athletes and the public community could post cheers on the #cheer4SzeEn Social Board and write letters to our own Olympic gymnast, Tan Sze En, to show support ahead of her Olympic debut.

Singaporean gymnasts Tan Sze En competed at the 2020 Olympics in late July/early August in the balance beam and the floor exercise. Sze En is only the second Singaporean gymnast to achieve this feat and follows in the footsteps of Lim Heem Wei who was our first gymnast to compete at the Olympics in London 2012.

Later in August, Singapore Gymnastics commenced the annual club visits to catch up with affiliated clubs on how they are coping during fluid times, recap, review and address previous year’s club visit items. We released the Club Quality Assurance Programme, which is a quality assurance, risk management and club development system for affiliated gymnastics clubs as an approach to ensure their long-term success. This involves improving clubs processes, products, services, and culture to achieve Safety, Quality and Sustainability.

The 2021 Coaches Congress was held in September over 2 mornings and it was just fantastic to see everyone in person, 112 sign-in attendance in total. Across the 4 disciplines, we had 13 Singapore-based local and international coaches presenting 21 workshop topics that covers techniques, understanding code of points and judging criteria, the importance of coaching as a coach rather than a judge as well as being an ethical coach. 

September also saw Singapore Gymnastics President Dr Patrick Liew being elected to the Singapore National Olympic as a National Sports Association (NSA) representative on the Executive Committee of the Singapore National Olympic Council. Patrick is the first Singapore Gymnastics representative to serve on the SNOC Ex-co.

In October, Singapore Gymnastics rolled out Body Confidence Guidelines to help athletes feel comfortable and confident with themselves. These guidelines were developed in collaboration with Singapore Sport Institute (SSI) and National Youth Sport Institute (NYSI) to educate and protect our athletes while providing a safe environment for them to enjoy and excel in their sport. These guidelines will set the standard for our sporting eco-system to adhere to in managing issues surrounding body image. This also plays key part in the wider Safe Sport drive launched in 2018.

Singapore Gymnastics takes Safe Sport and Child Safety very seriously, other endeavours we’ve undertaken in this space and shared with our community includes updating the Child Safe policy which has also been translated Chinese and Russian due to the importance of this subject.

In November, Singapore Gymnastics also released our 2021-2024 Strategic Plan during Club Forum 2021, which builds on the initiatives developed over the past 4 years and ensure decisions for continual improvement are data-driven. Areas of focus include:

• Developing Strong and Robust Clubs
• Growing Membership & Participation
• Capacity and Capability Building of the Coaching Workforce
• Ensuring an Athlete Centric High-Performance Programme
• Child Safety is Imbedded in Organisational Leadership, Governance and Culture
• Engagement of Parents Throughout the Pathway
• Retention of Athletes and Coaches

Finally in December, Singapore Gymnastics wraps up the year with the final competition which is the inaugural Singapore Gymnastics Classics across Men’s Artistic Gymnastics (MAG), Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG), and Rhythmic Gymnastics (RG). The first of many more to come.

Singapore Gymnastics would like to extend many thanks to the gymnastics community for your ongoing support and perseverance throughout 2021. We hope to see everyone in their gyms again next year and look forward to seeing you in 2022.