This year's SEA Games has seen Singaporean athletes bagging a total 57 gold medals so far — a shiny new record, compared to their previous best of 43 in Korat, Thailand in 2007. 

In an interview with TODAY, Chief Executive Officer of public agency Sport Singapore Lim Teck Yin said he was "particularly impressed" with Team Singapore's 308 debutantes.

Lim, however, was decidedly not impressed with Singapore Athletics (previously known as the Singapore Athletics Association) — the official sporting association for Singaporean track and field athletes.

This year alone has seen the SA embroiled in a number of disputes, including one between coach Margaret Oh and technical director Volker Hermann over various issues. It ended with the SA threatening to drop sprinter Shanti Pereira (who was under Oh's charge) from the 4x100m relay team.

Due to further cases of infighting, a decision was made re-elect its management committee members — until International Olympic Committee member Ng Ser Miang intervened.

Things got so bad that the Singapore National Olympic Council and Sport Singapore had to step in to appoint a major Games preparation committee to oversee the SEA games athletes.

However, as the committee only came forward to support the athletes at the last minute, Lim said they could only "steady the ship" and "try to build a sense of team sprit" around the team.

As for the SA, Lim also added:

“We know that the sort of infighting and continuing discord in Singapore Athletics is not doing the sport any favours, and I think they need to take a hard look inwards. The management committee, the affiliates who vote them in, they have to ask themselves, ‘is this a sport that Singapore can count on or whether we should be looking elsewhere for our Team Singapore high performance?’”

Pereira, who finished with a bronze this year, was quoted saying that she had been affected by the earlier saga with the SA, while other track & field athletes said they could have used more support from them.

As it is, hints of dissatisfaction could be found in some of the athletes' social media posts, such as national pole vaulter Rachel Isabel Yang, who spoke of "turmoil", "challenges/distractions" and "lack of support":

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYR5QcxnWy8/

"Despite all the challenges and lack of support from the association leading up to the games, I think we have done really well as a team."

Yang, one of the more outspoken athletes about the association's issues, was herself caught up in a couple of tussles where the SA failed to make proper flight arrangements for her vaulting equipment and more recently, failed to procure proper attire for her at this year's SEA Games.

In another report by TODAY, gold medal marathoner Soh Rui Yong also brought up the SA's lack of support for the athletes:

“I know for a fact that [high jumper] Michelle Sng didn’t get a lot of support leading up to this Games. She applied for gold-medal campaign support and didn’t get it and she got a gold medal anyway."

The tenacity of the athletes, however, shine through the "distractions" bought about by the politics, and that's what still gives us hope.

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Top image adapted from Lim Teck Yin's Facebook and Veronica Shanti Pereira's Instagram.