Singapore figure skater Pagiel Sng carving his own path forward

Singapore is a land of heat and humidity and frequent monsoons. Not exactly the conditions in which you'd expect to find an up-and-coming figure skater who has already begun to make waves at the junior levels.

But Pagiel Sng wants to prove the naysayers wrong. The 18-year-old, who is taking part in the ISU Junior Grand Prix in Egna, Italy, is the first man from his tropical country to qualify for the ISU's Four Continents Figure Skating Championships, the continental event open to skaters from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.

And, unsurprisingly, he has the World Junior Championships later this season, and the Olympic Winter Games 2026 in his sights. "I want to put Singapore on the map for figure skating and show everyone that we can compete internationally," he said recently.

Singapore's only top-level figure skater

How exactly does someone from an equatorial land like Singapore take up figure skating? It's not exactly a land known for it – the only top-level figure skater to have previously trained in the country is South Korea's You Young, who lived in Singapore until she was nine years old.

For his part, Sng didn't take up the sport in Singapore. As a child, he lived in Denmark – and that's where he first encountered skating, training with a coach until the family returned home 10 years ago.

Now, Sng is a student at the Singapore Sports School, which seeks to train the very best athletes in the country. However, it has not been a straightforward path for the Singaporean, due to the limited number of Olympic-sized rinks in the country.

Indeed, he shares his training ice with regular punters and skaters from every skill level – meaning he has to contend with a crowded rink and a lack of space to safely execute his more difficult jumps.

It's a story that is familiar to many skaters from countries without a tradition in figure skating – Malaysia's Julian Yee, who made his Olympic debut at PyeongChang 2018, also had to train in a rink in a shopping mall.

Pagiel Sng setting the standard

Sng has no one's footsteps to follow in. In fact, Singapore have only appeared at an Olympic Winter Games once – in 2018, when Cheyenne Goh competed in short track. In effect, he is paving the way for others to follow.

And he has the talent to do so. In 2019, he competed at the South-East Asian Games, becoming the first man from Singapore to do so. More recently, he won the inaugural SEA Open Figure Skating Trophy in September, obtaining a score high enough to qualify him for the Four Continents.

At that latter competition, he attempted a quadruple toe-loop – an important element for any upcoming figure skater to have in their repertoire, as quad jumps provide the most base points. While he did not land the element cleanly and received a negative grade of execution from the judges (meaning points were deducted from his base value), he still showed glimpses of what he can do.

In a recent interview with Circle, Sng admitted training for the jump came at a cost. "I had so many bruises all over. Sometimes, it was hard to walk the day after because the falls were pretty bad, and my joints were aching.

"I just bandaged my wounds to stop any bleeding, and I just kept going."

His scores – 115.72 in the free skating and 172.12 overall – would have been enough to place 10th and 12th respectively at the most recent Junior Grand Prix in Gdansk. Those same points would have placed him 18th in the free skate and 22nd overall, had he competed at the 2022 World Junior Championships.

Looking forward for Pagiel Sng

Sng is aiming to qualify for the World Junior Championships in 2023; to do so he will need to obtain minimum technical scores of 25.00 in the short program and 44.00 in the free skating at an ISU junior competition.

His marks at the SEA Open, a senior competition, were 29.97 and 59.58 respectively, meaning a repeat performance of that at the Junior Grand Prix in Egna (12-15 October) would be enough to see him qualify for World Juniors, which are due to be held in Calgary, Canada, in February.

However, the 18-year-old admits he still has to grow as a skater and an athlete. "I am quite insecure, and I tend to not have a lot of confidence. Even if a training session goes well, I still have low self confidence in competing," he told Circle.

The recent win went some way to helping that. "(It) gave me a much needed confidence boost and reaffirms my efforts. It makes all those training sessions worth it."

While he will no longer be eligible for the junior level from next season, ruling him out of the Gangwon 2024 Winter Youth Olympic Games, he hopes to make it to the main Olympic Winter Games in 2026, when he will be 21.

"I have to trust my own abilities. I will take the win and capitalise on it by encouraging myself to push myself even more during training."

Who knows, more history could yet be on the horizon for Singapore's men's figure skating pioneer.