Getting the adrenaline rush from start to finish

ONG Ling Lee often has the best seat in the house at Singapore’s sporting events. Whether it’s flagging off the annual Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon, getting up close with Formula 1’s (F1) drivers, or even watching video gamers slug it out at a Street Fighter tournament, she’s usually right in the thick of the action and experiencing the adrenaline rush from start to finish.

As the executive director of sports and wellness at the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), her team helps to bring world-class events to life and market them to attract locals as well as visitors from all over the world.

Besides sports, she’s also on the lookout for different wellness experiences and events to add to the calendar, be it a yoga session on the Marina Bay Sands SkyPark or a forest bathing journey at Jewel Changi Airport.

BT Weekend recently met Ong at her office, just across the road from Tanglin Mall, for a chat. She opens up about the perks and challenges of her job, and how a “Forrest Gump” moment 20 years ago turned her into the avid runner she is today. This is an edited excerpt of the interview.

You took on this role at STB in end-2019. Tell me more about what you do. I think I probably have the most fun job at STB, because I get to make exciting sporting events and wellness experiences happen. My team is responsible for sports and wellness tourism, and our goal is to secure and develop world-class sporting events, as well as innovative wellness experiences.

Part of what we do is the execution. Making an event happen in Singapore is not straightforward. For the Singapore Marathon, for instance, we need to close many roads so my team is responsible for working with different government agencies to do what’s necessary.

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We oversee all sorts of sporting events in Singapore, like F1, the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) Asian Open, the Tour de France Prudential Singapore Criterium, and events that take place in the National Stadium and the Indoor Stadium.

Speaking of F1, I had the dubious honour of being the first STB director of sports who experienced the cancellation of an F1 race (in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic).

The Singapore Marathon takes place on the first weekend of December. How are the preparations? We meet all the different partners and agencies sometime at the start of the year in January or February. We would have done the after-action review by the first quarter, so we can learn from and continue the best practices. The sign-ups are very healthy this year.

The marathon is one of the biggest events in Singapore, with 40,000 to 50,000 people taking part. We are likely to have about 8,000 international runners by the time registrations close. We’re always looking at how to liven things up and to make it more innovative.

This year’s race will be a World Athletics Gold Label race. The route is also different. We will start at the F1 Pit Building, but the finish line will be at the National Stadium.

Which is your favourite event? That’s like asking me who’s my favourite child (laughs). I’d say each event has its own characteristics and fun elements. Take F1 – the scale is enormous, and the pressure on us is enormous as well. It always gives me goosebumps whenever I get to sing the National Anthem before the race.

And for the Singapore Marathon, I enjoy running, so it gives me a great sense of satisfaction that I get to do my work, and I get to do something I really like as well, which is running.

Even for smaller events like the World Sport Stacking Championships (which Singapore hosted in April this year), it’s quite fun to watch. Sport stacking is a niche sport, and when I went to the venue (at the Singapore University of Technology and Design), I saw young kids doing the cup stacking like it was second nature to them. You can see how dedicated they are to their craft, and I was quite taken aback.

Do you go and court these types of niche events? For the stacking event, (the organisers) came to us and we supported it because we saw it could draw a very strong crowd. There were competitors from 17 countries taking part in singles and doubles competition. For such events where there are younger participants, they usually have their parents and even grandparents with them.

Every sporting event brings its own value and angle that attracts different target segments for our visitors. There is the very young, and we love this group because it means the parents and siblings get to travel with them. There are the amateurs who fly around the world to take part in a running event or other sports. And there are people of all ages who want to support their favourite athlete or team, and they will travel to Singapore to watch them play.

The sports fans in Singapore are also passionate and they love it when the international teams (like those of football or rugby) come to town, and they can watch them right at their doorstep.

I notice a lot more new events being held in Singapore in the last year or so. Singapore is already a leading business and leisure destination, and I was fortunate to inherit the good work of the predecessors before me in building up the wonderful sports calendar we have today. We’ve got the PTO Asian Open until 2025, the Tour De France until 2024, and in January this year we saw the debut of (international sailing competition) SailGP.

We are always looking at the different world-class sporting events around the world, and which ones we can attract and anchor in Singapore. That involves doing business development, talking to the IP (intellectual property) owners, the event organisers.

We need to make discerning choices about the genres we want to spend our time and effort on, and decide which ones make the most sense for Singapore as a destination, and to draw the right kind of travellers. We also want to make sure the locals will enjoy and support these events too.

Look at the Tokyo Olympics or the recent Asian Games in Hangzhou. There’s a new big category that’s catching on, with young athletes becoming gold medallists in skateboarding, wall climbing, and BMX cycling. We are looking out for what might be the next big thing in sports that can capture the world’s attention, so that we can bring these events to Singapore.

Let’s talk about wellness, and why STB is going big on this. Wellness became a corporate focus for STB in 2020 and 2021, during the pandemic. What we observed was that there was a greater emphasis on one’s wellness – by that, we mean an active pursuit of maintaining your physical, mental and emotional health.

According to the (US-based non-profit organisation) Global Wellness Institute, the size of the wellness economy will reach US$1.3 trillion by 2025. We took a good look at that, and felt this would be a strategic move for us as we come out of the pandemic. There’s growing evidence that more people are willing to travel for wellness purposes.

Wellness includes fitness and lifestyle, emotional and mental health, and other things like day spas and treatments. We thought Singapore could be a place for all of this, since we are really a city in nature. There are the green spaces where you can catch a breather and rejuvenate, and after clearing your mind it’s easy to go and enjoy all the amenities of an urban setting, which we have too. We are trying to build ourselves as an urban wellness haven.

Where do these wellness tourists usually come from? For wellness, there are two types of travellers. There’s the primary traveller, whose main purpose is to enjoy wellness experiences. The secondary traveller is someone who tries to incorporate wellness routines and experiences during their trips. As Singapore is quite new in this space, our initial plan is to capture this secondary traveller, and many come from our source markets like countries in the region, Australia, China and others.

The hope is that they can discover that Singapore is more than just shopping (which is important) and eating (another of our strong points), and they can incorporate the wellness routines that they already enjoy back home, or they may discover new things.

In the medium to longer term, we want to attract the primary wellness traveller. This will require quite a bit of infrastructure development, such as dedicated spaces and facilities for wellness. We hope to push the boundaries a bit more, to have the things that people will travel to Singapore for. We have some plans already, but we’re not at the liberty to discuss these yet.

What’s your fitness routine like these days? I’ve been running for quite a while. I had a “Forrest Gump” moment in 2004, and one day I decided I wanted to run. I was quite foolish then, because the first thing I did was to sign up for a half-marathon.

That year, I completed a 100 km walk in Singapore, and I thought I should do more to maintain my fitness. I ran the half-marathon (21.1 km) and it just grew from there. I did my first full marathon in 2010 or 2011 in Singapore, and I also went overseas for marathons. I even attempted an ultra-marathon.

During the pandemic, I did a lot of cycling. These days I don’t run as much as I would like to, but because I’m doing the 100 km walk again in November, I’m going to the gym more to do strength exercises. I used to do yoga thrice a week, but these days if I can go at least once, that would be good.