By Ng Enna/Red Sports

Singapore Sports School, Tuesday, August 17, 2010 – Singapore’s swimmers encountered mixed fortunes on the third day heats of the Youth Olympic Games swimming competition.

Amanda Lim, Clement Lim and the Men’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay team progressed to the next round while Cheryl Lim, Adeline Winata and Chriselle Koh missed out on the semi-finals.

In the Men’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay, Singapore’s quartet of Arren Quek, Pang Sheng Jun, Rainer Ng and Clement made the cut for this evening’s final, with a time of 3 minutes 28.66 seconds.

This marks Singapore’s first appearance in a swimming final of the Games.

Singapore trailed behind Canada in fifth after three legs, and it was not until Clement’s turn in the final lap that he managed to overtake Singapore-born Jeremy Bagshaw to finish fourth in the heat.

Clement’s astounding final leg split of 50.55 was Singapore’s fastest since Zach Ong swam a 50.48 to anchor the national team to a South East Asian Games gold, Games and national record in the same event last year.

During the interview, the boys were ecstatic when they found out they had qualified for the finals.

When asked whether the pressure was on Clement as the last swimmer, teammate Rainer piped in to say that Clement “strives under pressure”, with Clement most certainly agreeing.

Singapore cast away teams from Germany, Japan and Brazil to come in seventh overall, with Canada in eighth.

Singapore got the morning heats off with a positive start as freestyle specialist Amanda finished sixth in her Women’s 50m butterfly heat. With a time of 29.48 seconds, she scraped into the semi-finals as the 16th and final qualifier.

However, things were not as good for the other female swimmers.

100PLUS

Despite being first off the blocks in the Women’s 100m breaststroke, Cheryl soon dropped to third, but maintained this position to finish with a time of 1:14.38. She placed 21st overall.

Chriselle Koh and Adeline Winata also failed to progress into the semi-finals of the Women’s 200m backstroke after registering overall positions of 28th and 31st respectively. They clocked times of 2:25.81 and 2:27.49.

Nonetheless, Chriselle felt that she “did better than expected” because the 200m backstroke was not her “main event”.

“I tried to hit my personal best and even though I did not reach it, but I was close,” Chriselle added.

The boys, on the other hand, fared better.

Clement made it through to the 50m freestyle semi-finals with a new personal best of 23.86.

He was overjoyed, as it was his “first time going below 24 seconds”.

Arren missed out on qualification by slightly more than one-tenth of a second with his time of 24.03, which was also a whisker away from his PB and national under-17 record of 23.97.

The evening programme begins at 6.32pm, with the women’s 50m butterfly semi-finals.