Who was the most dominant schoolboy cross country runner of the last decade?

By Colin Tung and Erwin Wong/Red Sports

Saturday, March 19, 2011 — The annual National Inter-school Cross Country Championships are less than a week away. They are scheduled for Wednesday, March 23, at Bedok Reservoir Park this year.

Every year, three boys are crowned as champions in the C (under-14), B (under-17), and A (under-20) divisions. For a schoolboy taking the conventional path from secondary school to junior college, that means a six-year traverse through the C, B, and A Divisions.

Recently, as my fellow crew-mate Erwin “Statsman” Wong and I were discussing the potential winners of the various divisions, the topic shifted to who the most dominant schoolboy cross country runner of the last decade — the 2000s — is.

We know there are more ways than one that a runner can dominate so the issue is subjective.

But for the fun of it, we decided to carry out a simple assessment of past runners just based on one quantitative factor, which is the number of points they have accumulated based on their placings at every year of competition.

For those who have had the opportunity to compete at more than six editions of the Championships because they take a longer path to their A Levels, their score will be calculated from their first six years competing in the Championships.

Those who have not competed in at least six editions of the Championships are not eligible for consideration.

Thus, emerging from the assessment as top harrier was Jeffrey Ng, who competed for The Chinese High School from 2001 to 2004 and Hwa Chong Junior College from 2005 to 2006.

Jeffrey accumulated the lowest and best score of 24 points, amongst the candidates we considered, from six years of competition in the Championships.

From Secondary One to Four, he never failed to place outside the top three. He racked up a 3-1-1-2 sequence in those years.

In what might be considered the only blip on his record, he placed 15th in 2005 in his first year in the A Division. Jeffrey bounced back in 2006 with a runner-up finish behind Darshananth Jeyaraman of Innova Junior College but ahead of current top Singaporean marathoner Mok Ying Ren who finished third.

In our discussions, other names such as Chua Ee Ghim, Koh Kai Ming, Soh Rui Yong and Lee Ming Hui were also bandied about.

Even those from the late 1990s, such as Victoria School-Victoria Junior College trio Sunil Nair, Narayan Paudel, and Kannan Poobalan, were forwarded as candidates as initial discussions were not restricted to the 2000s.

Chua Ee Ghim, who competed for Jurong Secondary from 2000 to 2003 and Anglo-Chinese Junior College from 2004 to 2006, was a close rival of Jeffrey’s whenever the duo found themselves competing against each other in the same division (Ee Ghim is a year older than Jeffrey).

In 2003, when the Championships were held at Sentosa, Ee Ghim had finished runner-up to Jeffrey for the B Division boys’ individual title.

This time, in the fight for a different sort of title, Ee Ghim again finishes bridesmaid to Jeffrey, missing out by one point.

In his first six Championships, he accumulated 25 points. His C Division years saw him finish 10th and 8th respectively.

But it was when he stepped up to the B Division that he started establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with, finishing runner-up in 2002, 2003, and 2005. He was A Division champion in 2004.

Another candidate considered was Koh Kai Ming, who competed for The Chinese High from 2003 to 2004 and Hwa Chong Institution from 2005 to 2008.

Kai Ming accumulated a total of 28 points for third position in our hunt for the Most Dominant Cross Country Schoolboy Runner.

He was champion for three consecutive years of his secondary education from 2004 to 2006. He finished 15th in Secondary One. In his final two years competing in the A Division in the Championships, he finished second and eighth respectively.

Victoria’s Lee Ming Hui entered the fray as a Secondary One student in 2004 and compiled an 8-1-13-2-3-3 record for a score of 30 points when he finished his junior college education in 2009.

In our search, we had also considered a rare breed of runners. They are the A Division individual double champions. Since 1971, there have only been five of them. Two of the five achieved their feats after 1999.

The more recent of the two is Soh Rui Yong, who competed for The Chinese High in 2004, Hwa Chong Institution in 2005, and Raffles Institution from 2006 to 2009.

Improving from a pair of sixth-place finishes in Secondary Two and Secondary Three, he placed fourth in Secondary Four. He then won the A Division individual title twice in 2008 and 2009.

A 50th-position finish in Secondary One had however demolished any chances he had of being the most dominant cross country schoolboy of the decade, at least by the standards mentioned here.

Before Rui Yong, there was Sunil Nair. He won the A Division boys’ individual title twice consecutively in 1998 and 1999. However, his late start in cross country, in Secondary Four, when he placed seventh, precludes him from consideration.

Narayan Paudel would have been a strong contender if he did not have a lacklustre year in 1999 when he had to compete in the A Division while still in Secondary Four in Victoria School because he was overaged for the B Division.

Otherwise, he finished runner-up three times, champion once, and was sixth in the A Division in his last year of competition in 2001.

Kannan, a middle and long distance running phenomenon from back in his Primary School days, stamped his dominance from the moment he was eligible for secondary school competition.

The Victoria School student, in his first years in the C Division and B Division in 1996 and 1998 respectively, finished as the runner-up. Similarly, he posted identical results for his second years in the C Division and B Division in 1997 and 1999 respectively, winning the individual crown in both years.

Kannan also completed the 800m-1500m double in, astoundingly, all four secondary school years in the National Inter-school Track and Field Championships.

Unfortunately, Kannan could not participate in the cross country competition in 2000 because he was not affiliated with any junior college at the time.

He had scored above 20 points — the prerequisite to get into a junior college for the first three months of the year — for his O Level preliminary examinations and therefore had to watch the National Inter-school Cross Country Championships, held in early March then, go on without him.

After eventually entering Victoria Junior College, he finished ninth in the A Division in his swansong year in 2001.

So, who will emerge as the next dominant male runner in the schools’ cross country scene?

Whoever it may be, his trail to success has been blazed by the likes of Jeffrey, Ee Ghim, Kai Ming, whose paths were in turned paved by the exploits of an even earlier generation of runners like C Veeramani, G Elangovan, M Maran, Harpreet Singh and S Vasu, among others.

Two names from the current crop of runners stand out, and they are Catholic High’s Heng Yu Jie and Victoria School’s Marcus Ng. Yu Jie finished third and second while Marcus placed fifth and first in 2009 and 2010 respectively in the same C Division races.

Both, now into Secondary Three and competing in the B Division, have developed a healthy rivalry, and might just push each other past their predecessors’ sterling records in the schools’ cross country all-time list.

Most Dominant Schoolboy Cross Country Runner (1996-2010)
1. Jeffrey Ng, The Chinese High (2001-4) and Hwa Chong Junior College (2005-6),
24 points (3-1-1-2-15-2)
2. Chua Ee Ghim, Jurong Secondary (2000-3) and Anglo-Chinese Junior College (2004-6),
25 (10-8-2-2-1-2)
3. Koh Kai Ming, The Chinese High (2003-4) and Hwa Chong Institution (2005-8),
28 (15-1-1-1-2-8)