April 08, 2008	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1429

SINGAPORE, April 7: The public fallout following the split of Singapore sport’s once-golden couple is threatening to scupper the city-state’s Olympic medal chances.

The Republic’s table tennis captain Li Jiawei says she has been stung by a front-page story in The Sunday Times broadsheet in which former fiance and national badminton player Ronald Susilo said he was mulling legal action to recover money he claimed he had put into their car and apartment.

“Does he want to affect my chances of winning a medal or my moods?” Li said in Monday’s Straits Times broadsheet. “What is his motive and why now? I am a girl after all and he knows these things will upset me,” the 24-year-old added.

Li and Susilo ended their five-and-a-half year relationship in January and were thought to have parted as friends.

Li, who has been tipped to lead the women’s team to a medal in the Beijing Olympics, said she was “very troubled” by the claims she owed the 28-year-old badminton player money.

“I have the ability to earn my own money — why do I need someone else to buy things for me,” she said in an interview with Chinese daily Shin Min.

She did not want to discuss the claims but said “the truth would come out later”.

Despite his candour in the Sunday Times story, Susilo was later reluctant to discuss the issue further.

“This is a private matter between us and I really do not wish to discuss this publicly,” he said.—Reuters