SEA Games Swimming: Singapore emerge as kings and queens of pool with best gold haul since 1975

Men’s Team
The men’s team won eight gold medals to top the regional medal tally, and added six silver and seven bronze medals for good measure. It was a record number of swimming medals won by a Singapore men’s team at the Games, and also the most number of gold medals since 1989, when they last finished ahead of their regional rivals.

The 21 medals meant that the team averaged a medal per event, and as it turned out, Singapore were not represented on the podium in only the 100m and 200m breaststroke, and the 4x100m medley relay; the latter because of a disqualification.

Joseph Schooling capped his breakout year with yet another sterling performance. The 16-year-old student from Bolles School in Florida, United States, took his record-setting tally for the year to a total of 11 national open and 17 national under-17 records, including five each alone at the Games in the 50m, 100m and 200m butterfly, as well as the 200m IM. The quadruple-ASEAN schools gold medallist and double-world youth championships finalist had an opening night come-from-behind win in the 50m butterfly against home favourite Glenn Victor Sutanto, and then upstaged that performance with a brilliant display three days later in the 200m butterfly.

Joseph blitzed the field and won the gold in a stunning time of 1 minute 56.67 seconds, bettering his national open and under-17 records, as well as the four-year-old Games record. It also went under the ‘A’ qualifying mark for next year’s London Olympics, which guarantees him a place there. Joseph also won a silver in the 200m IM and bronze in the 100m butterfly.

In a display of depth in the men’s team not seen in recent years, four others won individual gold medals. Quah Zheng Wen, the younger brother of Ting Wen, won the first gold medal of the swimming competition in stunning fashion. He broke the 400m IM national open record by three seconds, and his under-17 mark by over eight seconds. Zheng Wen, 15, also added a silver and personal best in the 200m butterfly, and bronze and under-17 record in the 50m backstroke. His versatility, already evident in his 400m IM victory, was brought to the fore again when he finished fourth in the 1500m freestyle, just a second off the under-17 record.

Teo Zhen Ren, 17, won the 1500m freestyle and broke his own national record by 11 seconds while beating seasoned campaigners, two-time defending champion Ryan Arabejo (Philippines) and Malaysian Kevin Yeap. He was the first Singaporean to win this event at the SEA Games since Khoo Teng Cheong in 1979.

Arren Quek, a Games debutant like Joseph, Zheng Wen and Zhen Ren, won the 50m freestyle with a personal best time to cap off a year of marked improvement for the 17-year-old. He finished 2010 as only the fourth-fastest Singaporean swimmer for the year, but entered the SEA Games with seven-sub 24s performances. Arren was also named to the 4x100m freestyle relay squad by virtue of having the fourth-fastest individual 100m time before the Games. He won a gold from that relay and clocked the fastest split of the entire competition, a blistering 50.63.

Danny Yeo won the 200m freestyle and equaled his personal best. He also anchored the two freestyle relay teams to victories and with these three gold medals and silver in the 100m freestyle, emerged as the most bemedalled male Singaporean swimmer at these Games.

The 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle teams repeated their double gold performance for the third time and have now won these two events in five of the previous six Games. Like their female compatriots, the times clocked were the fastest in textile suits.

Another three national open records were broken. Jeremy Mathews set his third national open record in the 400m freestyle, Clement Lim’s lead-off in the 4x100m freestyle relay smashed his 100m free personal best by more than 0.7 seconds, and Zach Ong had a second record in as many Games in the 200m backstroke.

The breaststroke, traditionally the team’s worst-performing stroke, won their first silver medal since 1999 through Ng Jia Hao in the 50m. This stroke has yielded just 19 total medals for Singapore in 26 SEA Games.

Team Singapore 26th SEA Games Swimming team (Male)

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