Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 28, 2011 — Mok Ying Ren added yet another feather to his cap when he broke Singapore’s long-standing men’s national 5000 metres record at the Tokai University Time Trials.

The 22-year-old National University of Singapore (NUS) medical student clocked a time of 14 minutes 51.09 seconds (pending ratification) in rainy conditions to break Nadarajan Ganesan’s record of 14:57.61 set in June 1995 in Germany.

This was Mok’s third 5000m race this season. He first ran a 15:17.09 at the Singapore Athletic Association (SAA)’s Track and Field Series meet in April and improved that to 15:05.98 three Sundays ago at another SAA meet. The latter run placed him fourth all-time behind Ganesan, G Krishnan (15:03) and Chamkaur Singh (15:03). He has leapfrogged above them with his record-setting performance.

Mok also meets the qualifying mark of 14:59.85 for this November’s South-East Asian (SEA) Games at Palembang, Indonesia.

Before his latest national record achievement, he had been the top Singaporean marathoner in the 2009 and 2010 editions of the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon where he had clocked times of two hours, 43 minutes and 42 seconds and 2:38:27 respectively. The 2009 race was Mok’s debut marathon.

At the Bareno Run in Kuala Lumpur in March this year, Mok clocked the fastest half marathon time by a Singaporean in recent memory (there is no national record kept by SAA for the half marathon) with his 1:08:18 performance.

Before turning his focus whole-heartedly into running, the multi-talented Mok also won the gold medal in the men’s triathlon at the 2007 SEA Games in Thailand.