Singapore’s Only Ice Hockey Rink Is Being Bulldozed for Condos
The full-sized Olympic rink is hardly world class, but it’s home to a tight-knit hockey community — for just a few more months.
Ice hockey players in action at The Rink in Singapore’s JCube mall, which will be demolished in August.
Photographer: Reinie Booysen/Bloomberg
On the third floor of the JCube mall in a west-side Singapore suburb, past the KFC and the IMAX theater, sits an Olympic-sized ice rink where hockey players gather. In the island’s tropical heat, the cooling system sometimes buckles, creating fog so thick you can barely see the puck. Mold lingers on the surrounding white walls, and the Zamboni ice-cleaning machine often breaks down.
As facilities go, it’s hardly world class. But as Singapore’s only hockey rink, it’s where obsessives like Kiarra Chin, who plays on the women’s national team, goes just about every day — though her routine will be upended in a few months when the mall will be bulldozed to make way for condominiums.