Singapore’s 3×3 and Surfing Debuts Miss the Medal Stand

Singapore’s first 3×3 basketball teams left Nagoya without a medal, and its first Asian Games surfer was out by round 2. The June plan had sold those two sports as the new faces of the Aichi-Nagoya trip. Kitefoiling, the event that gave the country gold in Hangzhou, was never on the 2026 card.

A different first-time sport did pay. Mixed martial arts fighter Tiffany Teo won gold on 22 September, one of two Singapore golds through 3 October, with the Games due to close on 4 October.

A Court Beside the Station, Then a Quarter-Final

The 3×3 tournaments were under-23 events on a temporary court at Kinjo Futo Station Square, near Nagoya’s port, and they wrapped on 25 September. It was the sport’s third Asian Games, after Jakarta 2018 and Hangzhou, and Singapore’s first.

Captain Matilda Lai, Denise Choo, Lim Lek Kar and Cassandra Tay opened with a 21-13 win over Indonesia on 21 September, then lost 8-14 to Thailand and 13-22 to Korea. A 14-11 play-in win over Kazakhstan put them in the last eight, where the Philippines ended the run 22-12 on 24 September. The Filipinos went on to silver behind host Japan.

Lai was Singapore’s top scorer, with 26 points across five games. The side finished eighth of 16. Their stated aim had been a semi-final.

THE 3X3 MATCH LOG

Lai said the opponents showed the team where it sits in Asia, and that physicality still needs work. “We are going in the right direction,” she said after the Philippines game.

The Men Lose a Win-or-Go-Home Game

Ching Zhen Yu, Mohamed Faizal Mohamed Zahid, Liam Blakney and Michael Kesevan-Kankam pushed Japan to 21-17, held 2026 FIBA 3×3 Asia Cup runners-up Korea to 19, and beat Thailand 21-10. That was enough for a play-in. Mongolia, bronze medallists in 2022, then won 20-16 and sent them home in ninth of 16, second among Southeast Asian sides behind the Philippines.

The men had won SEA Games silver in 2025 and taken bronze at a FIBA Youth Nations League stop in August, including a 21-17 win over Australia. Head coach Lazar Rasic had said before the Games that the under-23 format was a way to give those players a first look at this level. Ching, usually a senior, had also played at the Commonwealth Games in July.

This is not our standard, and we came out soft. This is a win-or-go-home game, and we responded so badly.

Ching Zhen Yu, men’s 3×3 captain, Kinjo Futo Station Square

Only Zahid, 19, who moved to 3×3 eight months earlier, will still be age-eligible at the next Asian Games. Ching called that the only shot this group will get at a meet just below the Olympics. Zahid said he wants to “deliver a medal for Singapore” next time.

Two Heats and a 4.50 for Singapore’s First Surfer

Camille Spaccarotella, 21, a psychology student who learned the sport on Bali beach breaks, was the first Singaporean surfer at the Asian Games. Surfing itself was new to the programme: two shortboard events at Akabane Long Beach in Tahara, also used as a path toward Los Angeles 2028.

On 25 September she finished third in her opening heat with 3.26, behind Chinese Taipei’s Chung Yun-jung (6.56) and Thailand’s Annissa Flynn (8.80). On 27 September India’s Kamali Prakash posted 7.57 to her 4.50, and the campaign ended. Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi and Mirai Ikeda took the two golds; Indonesia and China took the silvers.

A typhoon swell had made the contest site unusable when she arrived, so she surfed near Irago Port with local riders instead of other athletes. She called that the surprise of the trip, and said it reminded her the sport is kept for life, not only for heats.

I did not get the result I wanted, but I came away with so much more: the people I met, the lessons I learnt and a much clearer idea of who I am as an athlete.

Camille Spaccarotella, after round 2, Akabane Long Beach

She heads to a London exchange and a six-month break from the water, with the Asian Surfing Championships next year already on her list. Her younger brother Julien is in the national youth team. “You do not need a surfing background to start,” she said. “You just need to paddle out.”

Why Kitefoiling Was Left Off the Card

Hangzhou’s three golds came from sprinter Shanti Pereira (women’s 200m), sailor Ryan Lo (ILCA 7), and Maximilian Maeder in the men’s kite. The SNOC said kitefoiling is not part of the 2026 programme, so Maeder was never in the Japan pool.

On 12 September, a week before the opening ceremony, he won the Formula Kite European Championships in Turkey for a fifth time, on his 20th birthday. He already had Olympic bronze from Paris 2024 and a SEA Games gold in December 2025, when he won all 16 races in Pattaya.

Maeder said in March it was “a shame that I don’t get to go there again,” and that he had no strong feelings about it because the venue list is not his to set. He also said he would keep working so the sport might appear at more meets. The Olympic classes in Aichi were ILCA 6, ILCA 7, men’s and women’s iQFoil, 49er, 49erFX and mixed 470. Formula kite was not among them.

Lo, the other Hangzhou sailing champion, did race. He finished fifth in ILCA 7 on 25 points. Korea’s Ha Jee-min won a fourth Asiad title on 9 points, Hong Kong’s Nicholas Halliday took silver on 11, and Malaysia’s Khairulnizam Mohd Afendy took bronze on 14. Lo went into the two-race final in fourth, then placed sixth and seventh. “Not getting a medal is disappointing in itself,” he said, “but putting the results aside, I didn’t really sail the way I would have liked to.”

A First-Time Sport Supplies One Gold

MMA was also new to these Games. Teo, 36, beat Uzbekistan’s Khilola Sobirova in the women’s traditional 60kg final on 22 September, after earlier wins over Iran and India, and after losing to Sobirova in the Asian championships final in May. The anthem played for Singapore for the first time at these Games that afternoon.

Pereira, billed in June as a headliner, kept her 200m title on 27 September and added 100m silver on 25 September, the same double she had in Hangzhou. Swimmer Gan Ching Hwee took three silvers (1500m, 400m and 800m freestyle). Loh Kean Yew took men’s singles silver in badminton on 29 September. None of that came from 3×3 or surfing.

HANGZHOU AND AICHI, SIDE BY SIDE

The 2023 team ranked 20th of 45 Olympic councils. The 2026 gold count is one lower; the total is two higher, with a day of competition still to run. The missing Hangzhou gold sits in an event that was not held. Teo’s MMA title is the new-sport replacement that 3×3 and surfing were not.

A 304-Athlete Team, Down From Hangzhou’s Record

On 2 June the SNOC named a provisional list of 256 athletes from 23 sports. “There were 115 athletes who had met the Asian Games’ qualification set by the organisers, and 141 athletes who did not have to,” the council said, “both group of athletes met and satisfy the SNOC Selection Committee’s benchmarks.” National associations could appeal later in June. The team that actually walked in was a 304-strong team including 15 Olympians, listed across 27 disciplines.

THE JUNE SPLIT, AND WHAT DEBUTED

• The 256: 115 had organiser marks, 141 were picked straight by the SNOC committee.
• The 3×3 group: four men and four women, the full under-23 quota.
• The surfing quota: one woman, Spaccarotella, Singapore’s only shortboard place.
• The cuts: badminton fell from 13 athletes in Hangzhou to four; archery sent two women’s compound names after a mixed recurve SEA Games gold pair missed the list.

Hangzhou had been a record 427 athletes in 32 sports. The smaller Japan team still covered new ground. MMA, surfing and 3×3 all appeared for the first time on Singapore’s Asiad sheet, and padel on the medal programme was part of the same expansion. The sports that were sold in June as firsts, 3×3 and surfing, are the ones that left without hardware.

Shannon Tan Adds Golf to the Medal List

Golf has been on the Asian Games since 1982. No Singapore golfer had stood on that podium until 3 October, when Shannon Tan, 22, the 2025 Ladies European Tour Order of Merit winner and a June debut name, shot a final-round 68 for a 14-under 266 at Kasugai Country Club’s East Course.

India’s Pranavi Sharath Urs won gold on 15-under 265. Tan tied China’s Yin Ruoning on 266, then lost the silver play-off when her par putt lipped out. She had led after two rounds. “To get myself in that position is something that I should be quite proud of,” she said, after four birdies in five holes on the back nine got her to one shot off the lead with two holes left.

Sailing closed the same day with three silvers and a bronze: Jania Ang in ILCA 6, teenagers Sean Kum and Nigel Tan in the boys’ 29er, 16-year-old Ian Goh in ILCA 4 (25 net points, the same total as Korea’s Choi Jiun, who had three race wins to Ian’s two over 12 races), and John Wong with the country’s first Asiad windsurfing medal, bronze in iQFoil on 25 net points after 11 races. Wong took up the sport four years ago after watching riders at East Coast Park.

The 3×3 court is already down. The Tahara heats are already in the book. Singapore still has 4 October, and a medal list that is fuller than Hangzhou’s and thinner in gold, with the two sports that opened the June announcement sitting on zero.