Before the 1948 Summer Olympics organised by Britain, Britain sent out invitations to its colonies and dependencies to participate in the Games. However, due to a lack of an Olympic Council, Singapore, despite being a Crown Colony, was omitted. This led to the formation of Singapore Olympic and Sports Council on 27 May 1947. It was planned that the Council will merge with a similar Olympic Council of Malaya.[2]
Singapore Olympic and Sports Council became an affiliate of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1948. That same year, Singapore sent its first two-men team to the Olympics in London. Lloyd Valberg became the first Singaporean to participate in the Olympic Games.[3] He was accompanied by a manager, Jocelyn de Souza.
Singapore has since participated at other international and regional games which included the 1951 inaugural Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games at Cardiff, Wales in 1958[4] and the inaugural South East Asian Peninsular Games (which was renamed as Southeast Asian Games later) in 1959. Since then, Singapore has been a regular participant in these games.
In 1970, Singapore Olympic and Sports Council was renamed as Singapore National Olympic Council.[5]
The IOC code for Singapore was changed from SIN to SGP in September 2016, and is first used in Danang 2016, Asian Beach Games.[6]
In 1968, the SNOC introduced the Singapore Sports Awards to recognise athletes who made significant achievements.[7] It includes awards such as Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year, as well as Team of the Year and Coach of the Year. The awards cover a wide variety of categories, and also honours other parts of the fraternity apart from athletes and officials.
A new award category, Best Sports Photo of the Year, was also introduced since 2017.
