Raffles family sweeps 4 of 6 swimming titles

By Marvin Lowe

Singapore Sports School, Wednesday, April 29, 2009 – Despite losing the B and C Division boys swimming titles, the Raffles domination in the pool continued as they won four of the six swimming titles available. at the 50th Inter-School Swimming Championships. Raffles Girls’ School swept both of the girls’ divisions while Raffles Institution romped home with both A Division titles.

Raffles Institution won the A Division titles with great ease, beating their nearest rivals by over 100 points in both divisions. Out of the 29 gold medals at stake in the A Division competition, Raffles took home 23 of them. Raffles were so dominant that even the combined scores of the runners-up would not have been enough to beat them.

RI’s Nicholas Sim won the first gold for the Raffles family amidst much controversy. Technical glitches rendered his win timeless and left everyone puzzled for a moment. It was definitely a dampener on his victory. But no technical glitches was going to stop the Raffles onslaught. Ng Jiahao then rewrote the 100m breaststroke record again. He had earlier set a new meet record of 1:05.80 minutes during the heats. This time, he shaved 0.54 seconds to win another gold for Raffles with a time of 1:05.16 minutes. This was his second breaststroke record of the competition.

Raffles then showed their domination in the backstroke category, winning all of the boys’ divisions plus the girls’ A Division. Syed Illyas Aljunied and Yeo Jia Chen Makoto Komatsu won the C and B Division respectively, following in the footsteps of their senior, Rainer Ng. Both Edith Ong and Rainer Ng had set new records during their heats. Even though they failed to improve on their performance in the finals, they still managed to seal the top spots in their races.

In the relays, the RGS C Division team led the way by winning their 4x50m race comfortably by about 3 seconds. Although the B Division girls team failed to land the gold, it was more than enough for them to seal both team titles. Quah Ting Wen then led her A Division team to a new 4x50m record, smashing the old record set by their seniors two years ago with a time of 1:52.20 minutes. The Raffles A Division boys then claimed the final gold of the championship to wrap up yet another successful year in the pool.