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MR Kamal Akhtar is no athlete. He has not even stepped into a gym in the past year.
But the 28-year-old project engineer was, for the third time, selected for the Olympics - as a torch-bearer, that is.
This time it will be for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing in May.
At a recent contest organised by Samsung at Suntec City, Mr Akhtar stood for more than five hours, holding up a paper replica of the torch with an outstretched arm.
He outlasted 109 participants to nail one of five torch-bearer spots, along with $500 in cash and an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Suzhou in China, where he will be running a 400m of the international relay.
Started in 1936, the Olmypic torch relay is a tradition in which the flame is carried around the world, via relay runners, from the Game's origins in Olympia, Greece to its host country for the year.
The relay kicks off a few months before the Games and ends at the lighting of the torch at the Games' venue on its opening day.
Mr Akhtar's debut contest was in Feb 2004, in which he won the chance to run the relay on the island of Crete, for the Athens Games in 2004.
He said: 'In Greece, we stayed at a resort which housed fellow runners from China, Russia, Nigeria, India and other places. Who you are or where you came from didn't matter, we were all part of one community united by the same purpose.'
'I was hooked from then.'
Two years later, he clocked in 10 consecutive hours at the same contest for a spot in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
His second experience proved sweeter as he was located in a small village in the outskirts of Florence.
Read the full report in The Sunday Times.
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