Singapore Prize Winners Announced
The tally of awards for Singapore athletes in this year’s Asian and SEA Games has topped S$2.3 million. Sprint queen Shanti Pereira has the biggest haul with S$315,000 for her two golds and one silver in Hangzhou, China. She is also the nation’s most successful athlete in history, having won a record seven medals in the previous edition in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2022.
She was joined by wheelchair racer Jeremy Tiang, who claimed S$140,000 for his win in the men’s 50km and 100m TT events. The 25-year-old was also crowned SEA Games champion in the same events in 2018 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
This is the third time S4S has clinched the prize. It is the only company in the world to develop and commercialise a battery-powered, electric scooter that can travel up to 100km on a single charge. The award will help S4S to ramp up production for the global market and bring down costs.
The annual Singapore prize was launched in 2014 to support programmes to mark the country’s 50th anniversary of independence. Administered by the Department of History at NUS, it is the first prize devoted to Singapore’s history. Prof Kishore Mahbubani, who mooted the idea for the prize in an opinion column, said it sought to widen the definition of history and welcome writings on various time periods and themes about the Republic.
He was among a four-member panel that chose this year’s winner, the book Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300-1800 by archaeologist John Miksic. The 71-year-old American, who is with NUS’s Department of Southeast Asian Studies, said that the work paved the way for “a fundamental reinterpretation” of the nation’s history. It highlighted bits of historical information in literary records, including references to a port and a trading post in Southeast Asia that many had speculated to be Singapore.
In a nod to sustainability, the award was presented by Prince William, 41, who arrived in the city-state on Sunday for his first trip to Singapore in more than a decade. He wore a dark green blazer from Alexander McQueen for the event at the state-owned Mediacorp Theatre, which was co-hosted by actress Hannah Waddingham and actor Sterling K Brown.
NUS’s Distinguished Fellow Kishore Mahbubani served as the chair of the prize jury. He said that the winning projects have a “unique ability to create or scale solutions for real, impactful change”. The award was presented at a glitzy ceremony attended by ministers and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who is a trustee of the Prince William’s Earthshot charity. The five winners were each presented with a snazzy trophy, a certificate and the Presidential Medal in silver, which bears the obverse of a stylised roseette of undulating folds and the reverse of the State Arms. The ceremony was streamed live online. The other finalists were a post-earthquake reconstruction in Indonesia, a stacked apartment building by OMA and Ole Scheeren in China, and a public park designed by architects Budi Prajot and Tito Supriatna in Singapore.