Something happened to the little island state of Singapore that hadn’t occurred in the last 48 years – they won a medal at the Olympic Games. It was a silver in women’s team table-tennis. It was no disgrace that they lost to powerful and dominant China in the finals. And the players who did the nation proud were Li Jiawei, Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei.

Wait a minute…maybe I was too quick to make the remark "did the nation proud". You see, those three - and even all the members of the nation’s men’s table-tennis team - are nationalised citizens. All were born in China and all were recruited to play for the country.

This has led some citizens of Singapore to comment that it wasn’t really a win for Singapore. It was, in fact, a win for the China 'B' team. The paddlers, they said, were not even Singaporean. How then can a country identify with their achievements and feel pride in them? In fact, one writer to the local press commented that their success had the opposite effect – it emphasised how unremarkable and unable the indigenous talents were and how reliant were we on others for our pride.

This is not the first time this issue of nationalisation has surfaced. In 2007, a Singapore national football team comprising a slew of nationalised talents won the regional competition called the ASEAN Football Championship. In a two-leg the final, they beat regional football powerhouse Thailand in a competition Singapore was widely expected to lose.

It should have been a catalyst to wild celebration, seeing how football is the national sport, and past wins in comparatively minor Malaysia Cup competitions usually led to a national orgasm. Yet the win was greeted by rumblings of how it was more "bought" by nationalised citizens rather than won by the indigenous sons-of-the-soil.

With silver being won at the Olympics, the issue has surfaced again. Instead of basking in the glow of a medal of any colour that hadn’t previously shone in 48 years, Singaporeans are bitching about who won it for us.

Perhaps it’s the inherent inferiority complex of the Singaporeans who think they don’t deserve to punch above their weight class in world sport. Yet they have achieved that in almost everything else -  and using a lot more foreign talents - for example, in being a global economic powerhouse. Perhaps Singaporeans just think they are the only ones in the world using nationalised talents to bring glory to the nation.

We are funny in that way. We seem to think it's embarrassing when we do it and succeed. Singaporeans seem oblivious to the fact that we are not the only ones in the world doing it. Watching the Olympics, sometimes it's hard to fathom the nationalities of some of the competitors.

Example - basketballer Becky Hammon. Becky is a South Dakota native and 100 per cent American by birth and one of the best WNBA players. So exactly why is she playing in Russian colours? As far as I understand, she doesn’t even speak Russian or understand Cyrillic.

Then there’s beach volleyball players Renato Gomes and Jorge Terceiro - both Brazilians by birth and both good enough to make the semi-finals of the event. But if they win it, the anthem they will be singing will be Georgian. "Singing" may be a little too presumptuous. Having only visited Georgia to pick up their passports, it’s a real probability they may not even know the lyrics to their adopted country’s anthem.

Why exactly did Hammon, Gomes and Terceiro decide to play for countries other than of their birth? The chance of making the Olympics may have been a motivation. Becky was possibly so miffed at being snubbed by the USA that she decided to defect. So perhaps the switch is motivated by glory.

If only the same could be said of the Gulf states who lured the best athletes with the promise of reward instead. Top runners from Africa and top weightlifters from Bulgaria have all found their way to the desert, tempted by gold for getting gold. And the scheme paid dividends when Moroccan-born Rashid Ramzi, now running for Bahrain, brought home the men’s 1,500m title.

But if I gave the impression that the Gulf States are the only ones luring gold with gold, I apologise. Bernard Lagat, who won medals for Kenya in two previous Olympics, is now running for the USA.

In fact, the Beijing Olympics have seen more athletes competing under flags different from the ones under which they were born. It is a world trend that this is happening and it is a clear indication that sport, like everything else, is transcending borders.

If pride is out there to be lured to our shores, why not lure it? Why should we turn our backs on what’s happening in the world and be like an ostrich with our heads and our ideals forever stuck in the sand? No one owes us a living. If we want something, there is ample precedence that we have to go out and take it.

So Singaporeans shouldn’t feel indignation just because a nationalised team brought home Olympic silver. Singapore has, after all, survived in this world by adopting the winning formulas of other nations and implementing them better than anyone else.

So both the USA and France have their table-tennis teams stacked with China-born players. Good for them. But for now, they have to compete for the bronze since the silver is won and worn proudly around the necks of three nationali… oh, screw the suffix. They are Singaporeans.