AYG Swimming: Fruitful day for Singapore as Quah Ting Wen wins her second gold

Story by Koh Yizhe/Red Sports

Singapore Sports School, Sunday, July 5, 2009 - Singapore won a gold, silver and bronze medal each today at the Asian Youth Games swimming competition, with the highlight of the night coming when Quah Ting Wen and Amanda Lim stormed home to a one-two finish in the girls 50m freestyle.

Singapore's boys also took bronze when Rainer Ng, Lionel Khoo, Mohd Kamal Dzulhaili and Clement Lim teamed together to finish with a time of 3:52.59 in the 4x100m medley relay. Dzulhaili was chosen ahead of Jonathan Poh to swim the butterfly leg, as the latter was rested after his 100m butterfly final earlier in the night.

Ting Wen and Amanda talked about "everything except the race" to keep nerves out of their system, as they firmly believed before the race that they could achieve a 1-2 finish in the 50m freestyle. It seemed to work as Ting Wen touched home first with a time of 25.43 seconds, just 0.25s before compatriot Amanda. Ting Wen’s time was 0.05s shy of Amanda’s national record of 25.38s set in the semi-finals.

Stephanie Au of Hong Kong took the bronze with a time of 26.22s.

Amanda commented after the race, "This is probably the only event in the AYG that Singapore would be able to claim both the gold and silver medal so we feel really happy for Singapore as well as ourselves. It feels very, very awesome and it’s super cool that we were able finish in the top two positions!"

When asked if they expected the result, Ting Wen hesitated before saying, "Yeah, sort of. Although we were very stressed and scared before the race, we kept reminding ourselves: 1-2 finish, gold and silver medal, and top two positions. A sprint can be anyone's race and can be really stressful so it was good to have Amanda to talk to before the race."

"The two gold and one bronze in this AYG were beyond my expectations. It is a pity that Malaysia and Japan didn't send their swimmers as they have really good swimmers on their team and it would have been great to have swum with them. But it definitely exceeded my expectations."

"We’ve known each other for four or five years already and we are both racing for Singapore so it didn't really matter who won what, as long as we finished in the top two."

Ting Wen and Amanda also booked a spot in tomorrow’s 100m freestyle final and they will be hoping for another 1-2 finish.

In the final race of the night, Singapore's boys did their country proud as they finished third in the 4x100m medley relay. Their time of 3:52.59 is just outside the national record of 3:51.16 set in 2001. Rainer, Lionel and Clement are the current 100m under-17 record holders in their respective disciplines.

There was a glimmer of hope for another gold medal when Rainer gave Singapore a great start on the backstroke leg by keeping pace with leaders Kuwait. Lionel stormed ahead of the field at his turn on the breastroke leg, and kept the lead at the changeover. But Haili, as Dzulhaili is better known, surrendered the advantage in the butterfly leg, falling into third. This prompted the question: why wasn’t 100m butterfly finalist Jonathan fielded?

Clement, however, managed to maintain a podium position for the host nation in the freestyle leg, giving Singapore their 12th bronze medal of the games.

The Singapore boys were extremely ecstatic about their bronze-medal win. Rainer was proud of his teammates, saying, "For all of us to win a medal together really shows the team spirit and we are able to defy all odds. Even though most people didn't give us a chance at the Asian Youth Games, but with this win, we showed them that together we can even achieve a medal. We encouraged each other to tell ourselves that it is within our reach and we know that it is, in fact, within our reach.”

Clement was afraid his performance in the relay would be affected after racing twice earlier in the evening, but he was satisfied at the end.

"I thought I would let the team down because I had two other events before, but I tried my best and did okay. It really has been a great experience at this Asian Youth Games and to win a medal is really great!"

The boys were also grateful to the fans that turned up in full force to see the races.

"We think the capacity crowd really boosted our performance tonight. We hope to see this kind of turnout, if not better, for other events."

The bronze medallists also explained the mystery of the painted nails. As a tribute to Singapore, they all painted their nails red and white.

"It was Clement's idea!" said Rainer Ng. "We actually wanted to paint stars and a moon but it's kinda hard!"

But the question still remained, what about Jonathan?

Despite clocking a personal best time of 57.24 in the qualifiers, Jonathan finished last in his 100m butterfly final with a time of 57.80. These are his best timings in a while as he had never made sub-58 times until two weeks ago.

With he being in the form of his life, and his contribution certain to help Singapore win a better medal, why didn't he race in the more important final?

He explained, "I blacked out during my own final as I only had five hours of sleep last night. This is a mistake on my part as I was playing. The decision for Haili to race was only made an hour before and well, he is one of the best flyers in Singapore, even though I think I have overtaken him. It was my choice not to race as I wanted to give the 100m butterfly final my all."

He also talked about his own final.

"At this level, position is not important. This important thing is the timing of your race. My goal in this Asian Youth Games was to firstly, reach the final, and secondly, to be carded. I have reached both of these and now, I think I am in the national team. I want to be able to reach an even higher level. My goal is (to swim at) the 2012 Olympic games in London!"

David Lim, the official team coach for the Singapore swimming team, also talked about the choice to field Haili.

"Haili's personal best time in the 100m butterfly is 57.5 while Jonathan's is 57.24, but today, during qualifying, Haili raced his butterfly leg in a time of 56.5. So we have two equal swimmers, but Jonathan has a final to race in. Eventually a team of six coaches decided to go for Haili as he would be the fresher swimmer."

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