Singapore Sports School, Thursday, June 23, 2011 — 14-year-old Quah Zheng Wen, younger brother of seven-time South-east Asian (SEA) Games champion Ting Wen, is fast making a name for himself at the 7th Singapore National Swimming Championships.

Zheng Wen set a national under-17 mark in the 400 metres Individual Medley on the opening night of the championships two days ago and followed it up by breaking the 200m Backstroke Under-17 record in the evening finals today.

The six Singaporean swimmers in the final very much represented the current and future stars of this event. Zach Ong is the national record holder (2 minutes 3.27 seconds), and Rainer Ng holds the second fastest time in the record books (2:04.06). Jeremy Kevin Mathews (2:08.21) broke Rainer’s Under-17 record in January, while Garret Tan is the holder of the Under-14 record (2:13.26), an age-group mark which Zheng Wen and Jeremy Tan once held.

Zach won the race in 2:04.80, a season’s best time, ahead of Indonesia’s Glenn Victor Sutanto (2:05.12). Third-placed Zheng Wen clocked 2:07.13 to break Mathews’ Under-17 mark by over a second.

Mathews, who turned 17 on June 14, set a new personal best of 2:07.62. Garret, who broke Zheng Wen’s Under-14 record twice in a month, fell short of another mark when he finished in 2:13.57.

Arren Quek set two new personal bests in the 50m and 100m Freestyle. The 17-year-old Anglo-Chinese Junior College student clocked 23.45s to finish second in the 50m Freestyle final. That time is just 0.01 seconds from the SEA Games ‘B’ qualifying mark. In the 4x100m Freestyle relay, Arren led-off for the Aquatic Performance Swim Club’s ‘A’ team in 52.29s.

Danny Yeo (23.77) and Jerome Teo (23.79) set personal bests in the 50m Freestyle, while Tao Li won the women’s 200m Butterfly in 2:16.68, her fastest time since winning the SEA Games gold in 2009. 15-year-old Meagan Lim clocked a personal best of 2:18.37 to finish second.