Singapore isn't known for being a sporting nation
and a lot of people said we'll never win
the Olympic gold medal.
This 21-year-old Singaporean,
Joseph Schooling, what a superstar.
History might come in the form
of Singapore's Joseph Schooling.
Everyone knows the Olympics is the biggest thing.
This young man, he has a very strong sense
of history and legacy.
It takes a tough, courageous person
to handle that pressure.
Everyone is watching
and that's the pinnacle for athletes.
He's been so impressive, and now he finds himself
in the fastest lane.
Keep your nerves, keep composed.
Now the scene is set.
And having to execute
everything that I trained for...
..that was probably the biggest moment in my life.
(GAME BREAKERS)
(JOSEPH SCHOOLING - SINGAPORE)
(GOLD MEDAL 100M BUTTERFLY DOB - 16 JUNE 1995)
My name is Joseph Schooling.
Growing up in Singapore, I used to live
on the east coast, close to the beach.
I had my first competition when I was four
and it was little 25-meter races.
I think I bagged, like, ten medals.
I didn't know what that meant at that point.
You see all these parents going nuts. It's kind of funny.
I loved racing.
And from a young age, had that feeling,
hated to lose.
He was a happy baby, very happy baby,
very easy to look after.
He loved the water.
Every holiday we'd go, it's, like,
he stays in the water.
It happened in her hometown.
He was about eight years old
and 4:30 in the morning, he woke me up.
I say, "What's happening, son?"
He said, "I've gotta go for training."
I say, "You gotta go for what?"
For an eight-year-old to wake you up
at 4:30 in the morning, that is special.
Very special.
And then I took him seriously.
Every meet that he swam was documented.
You could see a pattern, how he was advancing.
Then every year, I would put the times
he had to achieve, target that I put him
against American 4As, Triple As,
then the Malaysian record,
the Singapore junior records,
the school records, his PBs, and his goal.
(COLIN'S RECORDS OF JOSEPH'S SWIMMING)
(CONVINCED THE GOVERNMENT TO GRANT JOSEPH)
(AN UNPRECEDENTED DEFERMENT OF THE TWO-YEAR MILITARY SERVICE)
(REQUIREED OF ALL SINGAPOREAN MALES.)
(THIS ALLOWED JOSEPH TO CONTINUE)
(HIS ATHLETIC DEVELOPMENT UNINTERRUPTED.)
Singapore, because it's a young nation,
they were concentrating on building the country.
We don't have enough competitions.
I needed to go to a different level
of training to improve myself.
And the only way to do that, you know,
was to go overseas.
My dad hosted the US Olympic team in 2008.
Before they went to Beijing, they stopped over in Singapore.
Every coach he asked pointed to Bolles
in Jacksonville, Florida, under Sergio Lopez.
It was definitely a little intimidating,
coming from a smaller country.
That was the first time I'd been to the US,
first time away from my parents.
Honestly, I hated it, my first year.
Just hated it.
But for a 13-year-old kid, I was in boarding school.
I was a little spoiled in Singapore as a kid.
Never had to pick up after myself,
never had to do dishes, laundry, that kind of things.
It was a huge awakening.
And it taught me to mature real quick.
Taught me to grow up.
Not every parent can afford this kind of thing.
I sacrificed my business.
But that's my choice, it was nobody else's choice.
I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery.
It was difficult.
We only have one son.
Always I ask him, "So, you want to come back?" "No."
He might cry, he might whine, but, "No, Mom.
"If I come back, I'm not going to get to the Olympics."
That was his standard.
I wanted to make an Olympic final.
I wanted to be top eight and I thought I could,
especially in that 200 fly.
I can still remember walking into that call room.
Michael's in my heat, 200 fly.
I looked up, he was just looking right at me,
and you know, for a 17-year-old kid
to see Michael Phelps staring him down,
that was definitely something.
I had lofty expectations for myself.
I did some really good training up to then.
I think that was the most disappointing part.
(MINUTES BEFORE THE RACE, JOSEPH WAS INFORMED BY RACE)
(OFFICIALS THAT HIS SWIM CAP AND GOGGLES DID NOT MEET BRAND)
(REGULATIONS. HE HAD TO FIND REPLACEMENT GEAR TO COMPETE.)
(THE FIASCO DEALT A MENTAL BLOW TO THE 17-YEAR-OLD.)
I thought it was going to be the end of the world
and I started panicking.
And once you start panicking, you lose track of things.
You lose focus.
And everything goes down from there.
That was probably one of the most horrible experiences
of my life up till now.
I guess I wasn't old enough
and I wasn't experienced enough
to put that behind me
and continue doing what I was going to do.
For the next six months,
I was, you know, in and out of it.
I didn't want to swim any more.
I didn't want to go through it.
I wasn't focused at all.
I remember falling down.
I think I broke my ankle.
So, things like that.
I'm glad I could have great people around me
to dig me out of that hole.
Sergio, after a while, got pretty mad
that I wasn't bouncing back from it.
I remember, it was Thanksgiving in 2012.
We had a huge falling-out, we didn't speak to each other
for a couple weeks.
And I think that was when my wake-up call came.
In hindsight,
I'd say experience would be the biggest thing
that I was lacking.
But I'm glad it happened.
It helped me mature as an athlete and a person.
Those are the kind of setbacks we need sometimes
to find out what we're really made of.
To say, all right, if you really want to do this,
put it behind you, start moving on.
The clock resets every four years.
By the time I arrived in 2016,
I'd been to every major games there is
and I raced against everyone that I competed
in the Olympic final.
So I knew what to expect.
Actually, we were planning not to go.
We said, "We'll watch you from home."
Of course, my son says,
"Mom, I'm going on the podium. You're not coming?"
That's how confident he was. Can you imagine?
I'll tell you something.
20 minutes before he swam,
Straits Times interviewed me.
"What would you wish to say to Joseph?"
I would tell Joseph to stun the world.
Just stun it.
And that I love you, that's all.
I still remember how it felt before the 100 fly final.
Four years of work coming down to this one moment.
There were so many feelings,
the combination of being anxious,
being nervous, excited.
Very emotional.
Singapore stopped.
Even my friends WHO were playing golf,
they all stopped and went to view it
on their hand phone.
And then the schools had it shown.
Factories stopped work so that their workers can watch.
- Singapore stopped. - Literally.
Take your mark.
Schooling's reaction time's the best by far of everyone
and he starts well again.
Schooling's looking good
and right on that world record time.
He's transferred the form that he showed
in the heats into the semifinals
and into the final.
And he's a body-length clear, almost.
Can he hold on?
We were hoping to see history in the pool.
But we are, history, because Singapore
has won an Olympic gold medal
and an Olympic record time.
Joseph Schooling, simply sensational.
I was overjoyed for him.
You couldn't have written a better story, you know?
Greatest Olympian of all time exiting and you beat him.
A three-way tie at the end.
It was a very touching moment.
First time we see our national anthem
being sang at the Olympics.
That was really...
That touched my heart.
And so did my fellow Singaporeans.
A lot of them...
..were very emotional.
It was so surreal.
We arrived, like, 5am in the morning.
The whole Changi Airport was full of people.
There were people everywhere.
He was in the papers everywhere.
The response that I got back home
was a better feeling than winning.
It was definitely an emotional roller-coaster ride,
coming back for all the festivities.
On the deck, we called him the King of Singapore,
the Prince of Singapore, just to mess with him
because we knew...
We knew he was a celebrity, but we didn't know, like,
the gravity or the magnitude of it.
And then when we hit, when we touched down
in Singapore, you know, there was people
that ushered him from this place to that place,
you know, get his bags, bodyguards, everything.
He was like a movie star.
I didn't think the reception would be as huge as it was.
It was that nuts, because something like that
has never happened before.
It's great to see huge support pouring in,
not only from the government, but from the people.
Previously, we haven't been a sporting nation at all.
So, to see this glimmer of hope
for the sporting scene in Singapore, I think,
that's excited a lot of people.
And they're doing everything they can
to help more people get to that point.
I think he's really shown that culture
that you don't have to be a doctor, a lawyer,
or a successful businessman, you know.
There's success outside of those mediums.
And he's achieved it to the fullest extent.
An Olympic gold medal for such a young country,
it's incredible.
(AUSTIN, TEXAS)
(AFTER RIO, JOSEPH RETURNED TO THE US TO TRAIN UNDER COACH)
(EDDIE REESE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN,
(WHERE HE'D BEEN ENROLLED SINCE 2014.)
After Rio, and after he won, and set the Olympic record,
he had accomplished all his life goals.
He had to reset more goals.
And we didn't catch that until first semester
was almost gone.
He had a rough first semester, getting back into work.
But if you can imagine, at age 20,
your life goals in the sport of swimming
have been answered.
Olympic gold medal, Olympic record,
I mean, that's unheard of, because he had never
even finaled in the Olympics.
And he just stepped up, qualified first
after the heats, first after the semifinals.
I was scared to death, and then he won.
And so that's been the main thrust,
trying to get over that and get back in the...
If you want to get better, you gotta work harder.
His parents have been positive with him,
and I think that may be the most important thing
that parents could do or should do.
You gotta get it somewhere
so that you keep striving to get better.
And May and Colin are excellent at that.
I always tell him,
"Whatever you do, you're doing for yourself.
"It's not for me." You just have to support them.
- That's what we did. - There's no fixed formulation.
It's a sacrifice that you've got to be willing to make.
We were lucky, because Joseph
met some of the best coaches in the world.
Sergio Lopez was a coach that was good for development.
And then Eddie Reese brought him to another level.
All I want to do is get him to go faster.
If I can do that,
that'll take care of everything else.
And he's nowhere near as fast as he can go.
My love for racing
is the biggest reason why I get out of bed in the morning.
I hate practice, I'm not going to lie,
but I know that if I want to get to that point,
I'm going to do whatever it takes to be the best.
I'm looking forward to starting this new part of my life
and trying to inspire as many people as I can
to do things that previously thought they couldn't do.