No joke: Singapore athletes tickled by their 'names' on SEA Games bibs

Some of the athletes representing Singapore at the ongoing SEA Games in Thailand were caught by surprise when they received their competition bibs.

Only parts of their names had been printed by the organisers, and a few of them were tickled at the outcome.

The moment was captured by distance runner Soh Rui Yong and posted to TikTok on Dec 12.

"We're doing bib collection now and we have some really interesting results because I don't think they got the names in order," Soh said in the clip.

The 34-year-old points out that the name on his bib "was not so bad" as it was just his French name Guillaume, which he rarely uses publicly.

National 800m record holder Thiruben Thana Rajan's bib, however, simply said "Rajan".

"That's my dad's name, my dad's running tomorrow," Thiruben quipped amid laughter from some of his teammates.

Muncherji Zubin Percy was also in a similar predicament with his bib reading his father's name, Percy.

On the other hand, national 3,000m steeplechase record holder Vanessa Lee was handed a bib which simply read "Zhuang" — the last character of her Chinese name.

"This is what my mum calls me," she said.

Nicole Low's bib also had her Chinese name, Sui Xuan, printed on it.

This caught Soh by surprise.

"I didn't even know you had a Chinese name," he told Low.

While some of the athletes giggled at the organisers' choice of names for their bibs, others were unaffected.

Sprinter Shanti Pereira was one of those who escaped the mix-up, as the name printed on her bib was simply "Shanti".

When asked by Soh how her bib was correctly printed, the reigning 100m and 200m champion said it was probably because Shanti is her middle name and the organisers happened to choose it.

"Oh nice! You've been building up to this moment all your life," Soh joked.

As he goes around asking different athletes about their bibs, Soh realised that while some were "really off", others "got away with it".

"Alright, [it is] one of those things," he said.

[embed]https://www.tiktok.com/@runsohfast/video/7582961363606113544[/embed]

This evening (Dec 16), Soh finished finished seventh in the 10,000m final held at the Suphachalasai Stadium in Bangkok. The recent Singapore Marathon local winner had taken silver at the 2023 edition.

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bhavya.rawat@asiaone.com