By Erwin Wong/Red Sports

jeremy mathews

Jeremy Kevin Mathews clocked 3:59.41 to set a new national 400m Freestyle record. (Photo courtesy of SSC)

Melbourne, Australia, Saturday, January 15, 2011 – The first men’s national swimming record to be broken in 2010 came only in late April, but just 14 days into the new year, a national mark has been rewritten.

16-year-old Jeremy Kevin Mathews broke the men’s national 400 metre Freestyle record when he finished second in the final at the Victorian Open Championships in Australia, clocking a time of three minutes, 59.41 seconds. The previous record was held by Marcus Cheah, who swam a 3:59.44 at the 25th South East Asian Games in Laos 13 months ago.

Jeremy had signalled his intentions in the heats when his stunning 4:01.01 swim bettered Clement Lim’s 4:03.66 national under-17 record. That shaved more than five seconds off his previous personal best.

Marcus and Jeremy are now the only two Singaporeans to go sub-four minutes in this event.

Jeremy, who turns 17 on June 14th, carried on his record-breaking exploits today when he broke Rainer Ng’s national under-17 200m Backstroke record by 0.08 seconds. Jeremy’s swim of 2:08.21 bettered his own personal best by 1.76 seconds.

This could well be the break-out meet for Jeremy, who was ranked in the national top 10 in seven events last year. He won two individual medals at the ASEAN Schools meet in July and also represented Singapore at the Hong Kong Open and Commonwealth Games.

Fellow 16-year-old Teo Zhen Ren also broke a national age-group record when he swam the men’s 800m Freestyle in a time of 8:23.41. That decimated his own under-17 record of 8:36.96, and was less than 0.4 seconds off the existing five-year-old national mark of 8:22.93, held by Lionel Lee.

Zhen Ren also put in a strong performance in the 400m Freestyle, first breaking his 4:06.66 personal best in the heats (4:05.86), and then going nearly two seconds quicker than Clement’s pre-meet under-17 record of 4:03.66, en route to finishing fifth in 4:01.78.

Samantha Yeo, who will turn 14 in nine days time, equalled her own national under-14 200m Breaststroke record of 2:36.04 when she finished fifth in the final. The Raffles Girls’ School student also holds the under-14 50 and 100 metre Breaststroke marks.

Her RGS schoolmate, Koh Hui Yu, set two new personal bests in the women’s 100m and 400m Freestyle. Hui Yu swam the shorter event quicker than 58 seconds for the first time ever, finishing in 57.65 seconds. She then bettered her PB in the 400m Freestyle by over three seconds, clocking 4:19.10. Hui Yu is now in elite company, as she joins past and present national record holders Lynette Lim and Quah Ting Wen as the only Singaporeans who have gone sub-4:20 in this event.

Danny Yeo, who broke the national 100m Freestyle record and set a slew of personal bests in the 200m and 400m Freestyle in 2010, got the new year off with two solid swims. He clocked 51.36 in the 100m Freestyle and 1:51.48 in the 200m Freestyle, his fourth sub-1:52 swim in the previous two months.

The meet ends tomorrow, January 16th.