Story by REDintern Colin Tung. Pictures by Leslie Tan/Red Sports.
It takes a Superman to win the race. Adriel Tay (left) wins the race with a dive over the finish line. (Photo 1 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
Choa Chu Kang Stadium, Thursday, April 23, 2009 – Adriel Tay of Raffles Institution dived at the last possible moment to snatch victory over team-mate and 800m champion Soh Hua Qun by a mere 0.05s in a spectacular finish to the 1500m A Division boys’ race. Adriel won in a time of 4 minutes 19.23 seconds with Hua Qun coming up agonisingly short in a time of 4:19.28. In third was 5000m runner-up Lim Zhi Ming, also of Raffles Institution, in a time of 4:22.06.
The race started with Zhi Ming leading the pack through 300m in 50s. Kumaran S/O Kalaiselvan of Boon Lay Secondary was the blip in the order of Raffles Institution runners with Adriel and Hua Qun behind him in third and fourth place respectively.
At the 500m mark, Kumaran stepped up the pace and took the lead as the Raffles Institution boys followed him, assured in their superior numbers.
The 700m mark was passed in 2:01 as the four established a 30m lead on the chase pack. Zhi Ming once again took the lead at the 900m mark with Hua Qun and Adriel content to sit on the pace.
As they entered the business end of the race on the bell lap, the Raffles Institution trio upped the tempo another level as they dropped Kumaran. Hua Qun assumed control of the pace, intent on taking advantage of his 800m speed with Adriel latching on and Zhi Ming trying his best to hang on.
With 250m to go, just before the final bend, Hua Qun and Adriel started kicking in a bid to get ahead of each other as Zhi Ming fell slowly out of reach.
No inch was conceded as Hua Qun and Adriel headed down the home-straight, with supporters from their school shouting them on from the stands. Hua Qun was just ahead of Adriel at this point.
Their bodies slowly paralysing with lactic acid with each desperate push for the line, Adriel suddenly launched into a dive that saw him nick the 1500m title – the only event he entered for at the championships – ahead of Hua Qun who had also catapulted his body across upon sensing Hua Qun’s dive.
In a scintillating end to the 1500m final which saw hearts stopped and mouths agape, both Adriel and Hua Qun laid in a crumpled heap at the end of the track, bruised from the intense battle.
As Zhi Ming, who had a good view from right behind them, commented: “I was quite surprised. It was like a bad shock – the way they fell – and I was a bit worried as Hua Qun is also supposed to run the 4X400m later.”
In a relief for the Raffles Institution supporters, Hua Qun only sustained minor scrapes as he returned later to help the Raffles Institution team to 5th place in the 4X400m final.
Hua Qun shared about losing the race to Adriel.
“I am happy for him. It was a fair fight. We are both fighting for the school for the championship so it doesn’t matter from a school perspective.”
When asked what he learnt from the close finish, Hua Qun added: “It is probably the realisation that anything can happen in a race and how to handle the pressure during a race that gets you through.”
With the 1-2-3 finish in the 1500m, Raffles Institution made it a treble of podium finishes after their earlier sweeps in the 5000m and 3000m steeplechase events. The treble sweep by the middle and long distance runners contributed a whopping 66 points to their overall winning score of 167 points in the A Division, a contribution of over a third.
The A Division boys’ championship race went down to the wire this year, with Victoria Junior College just three points behind on 164 points and Hwa Chong Institution third on 152 points. Raffles Institution achieves their first A Division double since 2005.
Zhi Ming summed up saying: “I think we deserve it. We’ve been training very hard. I feel very good that the distance runners have contributed so many points to the school’s effort for the championship.”
Results (Top-Eight Only)
1500m A Division Boys
1. Tay You Wei Adriel Raffles Institution 4:19.23
2. Soh Hua Qun Raffles Institution 4:19.28
3. Lim Zhi Ming Raffles Institution 4:22.06
4. Khairul Amsyar Bin Mohd Razis Catholic Junior College 4:32.07
5. Kumaran S/O Kalaiselvan Boon Lay Secondary 4:32.37
6. Li Jianrui Hwa Chong Institution 4:33.53
7. Marcus Tan Victoria Junior College 4:33.80
8. Tiong Wei Jie Hwa Chong Institution 4:33.82
For full results, please refer to www.schoolsports.sg
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What’s gone and what’s on at the National Inter-School Track-and-Field Championships 2009
Soh Hua Qun and Zachary Devaraj win respective divisional 800m races but sub-2 min eludes them
Soh easy for Raffles Institution as they add 3000m steeplechase podium sweep to the one in the 5000m
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With 50m to go in the race, Adriel (#143) and Hua Qun (#139) are level. Zhi Ming is third in the background. (Photo 2 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
They match each other step for step. (Photo 3 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
The finish line beckons! (Photo 4 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
Adriel lunges ahead… (Photo 5 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
But Hua Qun leaps forward as well! There is nothing given away in this race. (Photo 6 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
Will a dip at the line do? (Photo 7 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
There is nothing to separate them… (Photo 8 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
… until a dive by Adriel that sees Hua Qun going over in dramatic fashion as well. (Photo 9 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
Superman lands as Hua Qun tumbles onto the field. (Photo 10 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
An exciting and gutsy finish to a race where there was very little separating the team-mates. (Photo 11 © Leslie Tan/Red Sports)
For more pictures, go to the gallery.
Other Raffles Institution highlights
Raffles Institution in the 4x400m heats:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRhSPB1i5JA
I watched the race and noticed there was pushing by the 2nd runner n confirmed by another parent. I have no vested interest in this race. Only athlete themself know the truth……
haha! maybe he thought it was the pool, like old days, n decided to take the dive. nice one lah adriel!
I think adriel didn’t do it on purpose. He didn’t dive. He tripped and fell. His dip wasn’t done very well so he couldn’t stop his momentum and thus fell.
I think they gave us a good competition didnt they, well at the end I guess they just wanted to give respect to each other by not allowing the either an easy win. So just relax john.
and i present to you john, the sore loser from another school
Woah it’s hard to believe that people are putting RI and the both of them down by merely looking at some pictures. How “smart” can these people get, they’re not even down there to watch the race.
Nor will they be able to fight like them IF they’re running.
They should just keep their lovely comments to themselves instead of trying to put people down, or else they’ll end up getting put down instead.
It’s common sense that what happened was an accident. Agreed with Colin, both of them definitely want to give each other the best fight possible as it’s their last track&field race for the school. Letting someone else win just because he’s a teammate is a greater insult to that guy. Do they actually know both Adriel and Hua Qun before they put forward any negative comments?
Kudos to these runners who displayed fighting spirit all the way, they’re truely inspiring. All the best to them. Once again, to those who still want to put them down, please, just shut up =)
hi weihan and ronghua (:
Hey John, while it may seem from the angles of photos that the RI guys were jostling and pushing, I was presonally there to watch the race and it didn’t seem as though they were doing so =/
It might be due to the parallax error of you while viewing the photos, or it might also be the parallax error from my position while I watched the race; nobody would know for sure if there was any physical contact. Even if there was indeed any physical contact, I would like to raise the fact that the boys had just ran over 1km at an intense pace, and while sprinting down the final 100m, they would naturally direct their remaining energy and spirits into moving their legs to reach the finish line as fast as possible for the school. It is no easy feat to be running at such a high speed, and controlling your direction and the flailing of arms does not sound as easy as it seems. The guys were just too focused on overcoming themselves and running their best for the school.
Yes, there is the possibility that there WAS physical contact, but calling them unscrupulous would be unfairly assuming that the boys had the intention of physically blocking each other. I strongly believe that the boys had no such intentions. Both of them simply had one common goal in mind – to run their fastest and push themselves for the school – and definitely not have any other evil intentions.
So there, I hope you won’t continue to view RI so negatively =/ Whether there was physical contact or not, the guys definitely did not harbour any unscrupulous intentions and any contact was simply something that could not be controlled easily!
dear john,
i think that your decision to discredit a school says a lot about your own personal character. commendable. ladies and gentlemen, i present john. OOPS it’s probably not his real name though based on character evaluation and inference.
Lactic acid has a way to make one lose control of one’s body, causing one to commit into such actions as the above photos show.
Same school or not, I believe respect for a fellow athlete is shown through going for the title the whole way and not holding any back.
I think a Steve Prefontaine quotation is particularly apt at this point of time. The American distance runner had once said: “A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.”
In what way are you capable of seeing it?
im sure it was all plain fun and good competition 😀
I think both of them did really well. Surging into the final stretch at such a fast pace, the guys were really just giving their all, the jostling was purely accidental. at that point of time, had you been running their pace john (which i doubt) i am certain your arms would be flailing about with your whole body in a mad frenzy to just get past the finish line.
“To me, it’s not mere competitiveness. It’s called unscrupulous. people, may i present to you, raffles institution. no offense is intended.”
This is an unfair and wrong generalisation. Would you rather 1 give in to let the other win?
john john. allow me a say in this. sorry, but sadly, such view is indeed myopic and truely, i feel, an insult to the many of us who gave our best in our races. i hate to say this, but i belive that neither of them were jostling each other, in fact, they were just trying their very best to get past that finish line. haha.. and hola!
but honestly, i don’t blame you. judging based on the photos you see, it can’t be help. you probably weren’t there when they ran, or you probably were. but whatever it is, i guess both of them know best what they were doing, i n trust and belive they were both giving each other their best, knowing that this wld probably be the last race before they begin studying for As.
i wondered too ronghua. hmmm. it was such an intense battle under such intense heat, not to mention, the lactic acid!!! they should have just stride finish, the medal was the school’s anyway. but respectable indeed! the way they give each other their best, whoah, i can’t help but laud them! i guess this encapsulates the essence of sports, where you give all that you have regardless of circumstances, and with that spirit, to reach your personal best. hmmm.. they both did awesomely well! =) n i guess they weren’t intentionally sticking close to each other. they were running on seperate lanes until they can no longer retain the posture n just by sheer determination ‘freestyle’ their way to the finishing line. =) an awesome race! =)
some may say that they are competitive, but from my perspective, they have overdone it. Sprinting to the finishing line, they started jostling each other, attempting to outmuscle each other in order to emerge as the champion. To me, it’s not mere competitiveness. It’s called unscrupulous. people, may i present to you, raffles institution. no offense is intended.
while its good to see competitiveness and people pushing to their limit. i wonder is it necessary to stick so close to each other (they seems to be physically pushing one another) and clash into each other path at the finishing line causing each other to fall. they are after all team mates earning points for the same school with no rival school runner near by, so is there a need. and they are also students who i think could do themselves some good avoiding a fracture hand or leg. nevertheless its alway good to see such a high intensity race in final. (fyi, i wasn’t there on the spot, i’m speaking from the pic.)
There is nothing to separate them.
at this point, both of em had already crossed e line! haha.
Omg landdis…
wow colin nice sense of humour. superman. haha.
I was watching from the grandstand but could not really see the end .But with all the excellant action photos and detailed write up can now better understand and enjoy & relive the excitement.
The RI team of runners did very well in A divison.CONGRATS ! Hope they continue to pursue running after their studies. Thank you REDSPORTS ! !