AYG Swimming: Amanda anchors Singapore to podium finish

Story by Jan Lin/Red Sports. Photos by Leslie Tan/Red Sports.

Singapore Sports School, Saturday, July 4, 2009 – After taking top spot in the 50m freestyle semi-finals, Amanda Lim stole the limelight once again as she was instrumental in carrying Singapore’s 4x100m Medley relay team to a bronze finish in a time of 4:13.34 minutes at the Asian Youth Games (AYG) Swimming competition.

With a team of versatile swimmers in Singapore’s AYG team, it was hard to predict who would swim for the 4x100m medley girls relay team.

Eventually Lynette Lim, Quah Ting Wen, Roanne Ho and Amanda Lim were picked for the event, though three of them besides Roanne, who would obviously swim the breaststroke leg, are freestyle specialists.

As the most versatile swimmer of the quartet, Ting Wen, who is also the current national record holder for the 400m Individual Medley, was drafted to take the first leg of the medley relay – the backstroke.

In a strategic line-up, Lynette took the third leg, the butterfly, while Amanda anchored the team in her pet stroke, the freestyle.

Amanda had earlier qualified for the 50m freestyle final, alongside Ting Wen. Both girls won their respective semi-finals, but Amanda’s time of 25.38 seconds pipped Ting Wen’s 25.54 seconds to start in the premier lane 4 in the final.

“I only found out I was swimming backstroke last night!” exclaimed Ting Wen after the final where she had given her team a respectable start.

Clocking a time of 4:19.42 minutes to qualify for the final, the Singapore girls had finished second in their heat behind Kazakhstan and were placed fifth overall to start the final in lane two.

What was even more amazing was that, despite the lack of backstroke and butterfly specialists, the girls’ timing of 4:13.34 minutes is only 0.16 seconds off the current national record of 4:13.18 minutes set by Shana Lim, Nicolette Teo, Tao Li and Quah Ting Wen at the last SEA Games.

Singapore had appeared to be out of medal contention and just gunning for the national record as up until the end of the final’s third leg, it was Kazakhstan, Hong Kong and Korea that were sharing the podium spots.

Kazakhstan’s backstroke queen, Yekaterina Rudenko, who had bagged the gold medal in the individual 100m backstroke yesterday gave her team a superior start to return home first with Hong Kong’s Claudia Lau following closely.

Korea’s 100m breaststroke champion, Jung Haeun, then swam an impressive second leg to pass the Hong Kong and Kazakhstan breaststrokers and allow her butterfly swimmer to dive in for the third leg first.

Singapore’s Roanne, who had just completed her 100m breaststroke final with a fourth-placed finish, touched home just behind the swimmers from Korea, Hong Kong and Kazakhstan. In the subsequent butterfly leg, Lynette continued to keep up the pace and the team’s fourth position.

As the anchor swimmers dived in for the final leg, the podium spots still belonged to the trio but Amanda gave chase and overtook Kazakhstan’s anchor swimmer at the last turn.

Amanda then powered on to touch home just ahead of Kazakhstan, as the team collected Singapore’s eleventh bronze medal at the AYG.

Korea had finished the race nearly 3 seconds ahead of runners-up Hong Kong with a time of 4:09.87 minutes, while Hong Kong’s 4:12.92 minutes swim was only about half a second ahead of Singapore.

“It was an unexpected medal given the strength of the other teams, but it was very good!” said Oon Jin Teik, CEO of Singapore Sports Council and the co-organising chairman of the AYG.

After the host picked up a haul of medals on the first two days of the swimming competition, the bronze medal was the sole contribution to the host’s overall AYG medal tally on a relatively quiet day at the pool.

Singapore’s only Malay swimmer, 15-year-old Mohd Kamal Dzulhaili, was edged out by Hong Kong’s Derick Ng Chun Nam by a fraction of a second in the final of his pet event, the 50m butterfly.

It was indeed a disappointing day for the Singapore Sports School swimmer, Haili, as he is more popularly known, also missed out on a place in the 100m butterfly final when he came in 9th overall with a 57.54 seconds swim.

Fellow semi-finalist and school mate, Jonathan Poh managed to wrestle his way into the final by finishing 7th overall in a time of 57.24 seconds.

Another butterfly swimmer, Tiffany Koh of Raffles Girls’ School, also had a day to be forgotten as she was disqualified in her 100m butterfly final.

In the 200m backstroke girls’ final, Singapore’s Adeline Shu Jian Winata came in last with a time of 2:29.35 minutes.

The gold for this event went to Korea’s Kang Yeong Seo, who had earlier missed out on a medal in the 100m backstroke final by just 0.03 seconds.

Rainer Ng and Yeo Jia Chen finished 5th and 6th respectively in the 200m boys’ backstroke final. Rainer clocked 2:08.94 minutes just outside his personal best, but was still a long shot from Kuwait’s star Abdullah Althuwaini’s gold-medal swim of 2:04.99 minutes.

Though finishing in fourth place without a medal, there was some cheer for Lionel Khoo’s 1:05.09 minutes swim in the 100m breaststroke final. The 14-year-old not only shaved a full second off his personal best, but he also knocked 2 seconds off the 12-year-old national under-17 record held by Daniel Liew.

This 100m breaststroke boys’ final also had two swimmers squeezing onto the top spot of the podium, as China’s Wang Ximing and Thailand’s Nuttapong Ketin shared the gold medal with their synchronised time of 1:04.45 minutes.

Singapore’s Clement Lim then kept the Republic’s flag flying when he finished third in his 50m freestyle semi-final to qualify for the final with a time of 24.17 seconds. His ompatriot Ho Wei Ming’s 24.76 seconds semi-final finish was not enough to see him through to the finals.

There are 14 more gold medals to be grabbed at the swimming competition, as the Singapore swimmers shoulder the responsibility of taking the hosts forward in the AYG medal tally.

Singapore is still in 6th position with 4 gold, 2 silver and 11 bronze medals.

Interestingly, Singapore’s 17-medal collection is currently the third most behind gold medal leader China and apparent bridesmaid, Republic of Korea. Korea is, however, ahead of China in the total medal count.

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