Was shooting at the Archery Association of Singapore's Potong Pasir range yesterday, and while those of us who decided to meet in school and proceed there together were on our way there, I discovered a curious thing indeed.

If you took bus service number 151, depending on which direction the bus was going in, you would pass almost every school which I've ever attended, in either the order in which I attended them, or the reverse order.

From NUS, 151 would later pass CJC, albeit on the opposite side of the road; then it would stop at a bus stop which is behind the housing estates just being CHIJ Toa Payoh Secondary and Primary. And then around the Potong Pasir area, 151 would stop somewhere behind Ascension Kindergarten, which is where I attended both kindergarten and nursery.

Interesting, isn't it? :D I only say "almost every school" because before I moved house when I was nine, I attended CHIJ Our Lady of Good Counsel in the Serangoon area.

The one thing that stands out the most about the training yesterday, however, is how un-spectacular the place looked and how infuriatingly windy the place was!

Well, all right, that's two things, but does that really matter? :P

But really; the place is just this big open space with target boards set up at 18, 30, 50 and 70 metres from the shooting line, and the various lines on the field aren't even properly spray-painted; they're nylon strings just strung over the ground to demarcate the lines. In places, the grass has also grown all over the strings, such that as some points, you can't actually see the shooting line and you have to look back or further in front to where the line reappears, for reference. What crap. Mind you, even the target boards look like they've seen better days.

There isn't even proper security or anything either; it's just this place which looks like an abandoned, undeveloped area, which has a gate (the kind which is really just a metal frame with wire fence across it) and a very ordinary-looking wire fence around it; there're about three small temporary-looking shelters set up behind the shooting line, and a collection of mismatched, sad-looking chairs and stools and tables clustered under these shelters.

And equipment storage was just... quite shocking.

There was one large white container, and under a tree, there was a large metal compartment which you see on the back of some pick-up trucks.

In the white container, you have some of those large foam squares which can be swapped around on the target boards when certain parts of the board get too worn out, but other than that, the scopes are also in there. I mean the scopes which the people who are shooting at like, 70 metres, use because the target's too far away for them to be able to see where their shot has landed without the use of the scope.

And those things are hideously expensive. Hell, EVERYTHING in archery is really expensive.

So, what about the large metal compartment sitting under the tree? Wanna guess what's in there?

Yeah. Bows. All of which probably cost close to (and if not, slightly over) $1000 each.

So all someone would have to do is drive up at night (the place is just off the side of a main road), break through the shoddy-looking gate, find a way to load up that compartment on wheels or something, and they could easily drive off with about.. I don't know, twenty thousand dollars' worth of bows, arrows and various other equipment and add-ons??!

And of course, right now, you're probably wondering to whom those equipment belong to.

And that's what really takes the cake.

Because AAS' Potong Pasir range is where the National Team trains.

Talk about the injustices which the lesser-known sports in Singapore have to endure.

Although the "lesser-known" status of archery might change after that article which the Straits Times ran in the Life! section of last Sunday's paper. Or this Sunday, if you're one of those people who believes that Sunday is really the first day of the week.

But I doubt that just an article will send hoards of people scurrying off to take an archery course or something.

And in the Sports section of today's paper, there's discussion about whether or not some sports should be considered sports, especially after Prime Minister Lee's idea that only disciplines which require "physical skill and exertion" will be regarded as sports, and therefore, be funded by the Budget.

On the right side of the article, a few "sports" are short-listed as either "50-50" (that is, they fall in the grey area as to whether or not they should be regarded as a sport ot not) or as being overlooked entirely.

In the latter category, there're things such as cuesport, dancesport and contract bridge, while in the "50-50" category, archery is right at the top.

You ask if archery should be considered a sport? Well, hey, you see it in the Olympics, don't you?

And if Prime Minister Lee still insists on going by his "physical skill and exertion" definition of "sport", then maybe he should consider this:

It isn't terribly fun or relaxing to stand out in the sun for hours. A bow does not draw itself, and an arrow certainly does not fly without any strength behind it. It may look easy to you, since it's all just a repeat of the same action over and over again, but I'd like to see most people try it. As with many things in life, it definitely is not as easy as it looks, and believe me, there IS physical skill and exertion involved. In recreational archery alone, I've seen many people who can't even draw a 20-pound bow; and while I started with a 25-pounder, which wasn't a problem, I took almost a month to get used to the 28-pound one which I'm using now, so you'll be surprised to find that the slightest increase in poundage means starting all over again from scratch.

And "exertion"? Physical exertion is there. And mental exertion in sports like archery and shooting is probably higher than in the more "physical" kinds of sports. I've seen it in my own teammates, where their scores during training can be in excess of 300, but drop to barely passing maybe 280 during competitions when they get stressed.

But seriously, the only reason all these "definitions" are trying to be sorted out is because of the Budget thing, and also because the more "physical" sports fit the government's campaign for healthy living and a sporting lifestyle. Singapore really is too pragmatic for its own good.

But seriously. Maybe before they decide to rule out archery as a "sport", perhaps the SSC and the AAS would like to point out to our dear Prime Minister that in the last SEA Games, Singapore's very first medal came from archery. It may have only been a silver medal, but hey, it was Singapore's first medal in that Games. And on a side note, somehow, no one outside of the archery circle in Singapore knows that.