Raffles Institution, Sunday, May 8, 2011 — Hwa Chong Institution student Wong Kai Yuen was in irrepressible form as he broke his own national junior Shot Put (6kg) record by 70 centimetres with his best throw of 16.07 metres at the Singapore Athletic Association (SAA) Track and Field Series 4 meet.

The 16-year-old had set the previous mark of 15.37m at last month’s SAA Series 3 meet, and promptly smashed it with his first attempt of 15.89m. Kai Yuen improved it to 16.07m on his fifth throw, and eventually bettered the old mark on four of his five valid throws.

It has been an excellent year for Kai Yuen, who turns 17 on June 17. Besides his two junior records in the six-kilogram shot put, he has also bettered the national under-17 records in the 5kg Shot Put. His gold-medal winning throw of 17.68m at last month’s National Inter-School Track and Field meet was not only a championship record in the A Division and an U-17 mark, it also met the qualifying mark of 17.60m for July’s World Youth Championships.

Kai Yuen has also bettered the qualifying mark of 16.34m for September’s Commonwealth Youth Games.

In other events, Mok Ying Ren was unsuccessful in his bid to break N. Ganesan’s 5000 metres national record of 14 minutes 57.61 seconds set in 1995, but still ran an excellent time of 15:06.0 to come within nine seconds of the mark.

In the women’s 100m hurdles (0.840m), Dipna Lim Prasad just failed to break her own national electronically-timed record of 14.56 seconds when she clocked 14.57. She also holds the hand-timed record of 14.3s.

Dipna also ran a personal best in the 400m, clocking 57.49 seconds to be the fastest Singaporean female in this event this year.