As Tokyo 2020 beckons, Schooling gets down to serious business

Singapore

SINGAPORE'S Olympic champion Joseph Schooling is in a battle against flab. The swimmer is said to be between eight and 10kg above what was his racing weight when he won the 2016 Olympics 100 metres butterfly gold medal.

As a local doctor commented, he is heavy with fat and not muscles. Obviously, this body frame did not help him perform to a level he is capable of at the recent Southeast Asian Games in the Philippines, although he won his favourite event with a late burst over teammate Quah Zheng Wen.

But the Texas University graduate is no slouch. He knows his game and the score. He is fully aware of what the Olympics is all about. He knows his world-class opposition in the Japanese capital next year. And he acknowledges that he is overweight now.

But he added that it was done deliberately as he felt he had no power after crashing out of the World Championships in South Korea in July. "I was weak, so I tried to gain a couple more kilos to get the weight back," he said. So the 24-year-old is bent on trimming the unnecessary mass and regain his competitive frame with the Tokyo Games just seven months away.

Soon after he returned to Singapore early last Wednesday, he jetted off to Virginia in the US to train with his former coach and mentor Sergio Lopez for about three weeks.

Then it is back to Singapore for a tough physical regimen with a team of overseas experts, among them a sports psychologist, strength and conditioning coach, medical doctor, chiropractor, biomechanist, nutritionist and sleep scientist.

Strong challengers

It is all serious business from now for the affable swimming icon who knows that it is a mammoth challenge for him to defend his crown in the light of strong challengers surfacing around the world.

Two names that he might as well pin up on his bedroom door - an exclusive spot that adorned a picture of swimming legend Michael Phelps for a long time - are that of American Caeleb Dressel and Hungarian Kristof Milak.

Both Dressel and Milak stand 1.9-metres tall, and they tower over the 1.84-metre Schooling. There are also Russia's Andrey Minakov, South Africa's Chad le Clos, France's Mehdy Mettela and Australian Matthew Temple to contend with.

At the World Championships in Gwangju, he failed to even make it to the semi-finals of the event that gave him global fame and many Singaporeans had written him off for Tokyo.

Schooling finished 24th in the heats in 52.93, even finishing behind two Asians, Japan's Naoki Mizunuma and China's Li Zhuhao.

But the silver lining is that his SEA Games time of 51.84 is an improvement of the World Championships time.

Singapore's former swim star Ang Peng Siong, once the world's best in the 50 metres freestyle, gave a vote of endorsement for Schooling with this advice: "I have seen Joe dominate the underwater kick for 15 metres after the starts and turns. That seems to be missing. His kick amplitude needs to be refined and more efficient."

Colin Schooling, meanwhile, has kept faith in his only child. He said: "I told my son that you can have specialists and experts. But you know your body best, and must be always ready to swim with your racing weight."