Do we like Joseph Schooling?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record with one real stain, an admitted 2022 drug breach, and no harmful words or company found.
Joseph Schooling is the bloke who beat his idol Michael Phelps in the 100m butterfly at Rio 2016 and won Singapore its first Olympic gold. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Singapore in July 2025, the first time the ceremony was held outside Florida. That's the sort of national-hero status that comes with a lot of weight.
The path wasn't a standard one. He started swimming at about four, and has said he wasn't going against the system, just taking a different pathway to tradition. When he retired in April 2024, he said he'd stopped enjoying the daily grind, and that he'd ended it on his own terms rather than let national service end it.
The big stoush came in 2022. Schooling admitted to using cannabis overseas while on leave from national service, and the Singapore National Olympic Council fined him S$10,000 and gave him a conditional warning, with a two-year selection ban if he breaches the code again. Urine tests for controlled drugs came back negative, and he apologised publicly. Singapore's laws are tough, so the fallout was heavy, but he fronted up rather than hiding.
In 2017 he also copped flak in Malaysia over an alleged remark about teaching Malaysians a thing or two about swimming. He said the words were taken out of context, but apologised if he'd offended anyone. A bit of cocky athlete talk that he walked back, rather than a pattern.
On the harm test, we found nothing. No searches turned up anything he's said about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and no culture-war company. That's an absence of evidence rather than a statement of his views, so we're saying only what we couldn't find.
Since retiring he's gone into venture capital and runs a swim school, Sports Schooling, and he works with his mother at her trading company. Nothing recent has turned up in the news that would count as a fresh controversy. Nothing new on him lately, really.