Story by Nicole Lum/Red Sports. Photos by Clara Yuan/Red Sports

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Yip Pin Xiu set a new World Record in the Women’s S2-S5 50m Backstroke with 1:01.61 minutes. (Photo 1 © Clara Yuan/Red Sports)

OCBC Arena, Tuesday, December 8, 2015 — Singapore’s Yip Pin Xiu smashed the Women’s S2 World Record in the Women’s S2-S5 50m Backstroke at the 8th ASEAN Para Games. Her time of 1:01.61 minutes broke the record previously set by Feng Yazhu in 2012 at 1:03.00 minutes.

Besides setting the World Record for the 50m backstroke in her S2 category, Yip also took the gold medal in the event where she was competing with swimmers who were three classes above her in S5. The race was a tight one, where the last 10m saw Yip move up from third to first place eventually.

Yip’s other medals were in the S1-S5 100m freestyle and S2-S5 50m freestyle, where she clinched silver with timings of 2:11.86 minutes and 1:01.23 minutes respectively.

“I’m so happy that it hasn’t sunk in yet,” said Yip on her new World Record. “I’m very touched and glad that I’m able to do this on home ground. I’ve done this time before during training but it being recognised as a World Record made everything feel real – like there was no more time to slack and fall off the programme.”

“I had a talk with my biomechanist earlier this afternoon and I asked him what I needed to focus on in order to get a good timing,” she added. “He told me that I needed to lengthen my strokes and basically not think too much. So I followed his advice and went into the race taking it as a competition with myself.”

“I think this is something we’ve been looking at – being able to focus on our own swims. I’m glad that I was able to stick to my race plan. My coach also told me to go all out in the last 5m so I think that’s where I caught up,” Yip explained.

“I was very nervous going into the race but I guess it was a good kind of anxiety that put me in the zone. I’m glad to be able to consistently clock this kind of timings and of course I want to improve with time to come. I will definitely not be complacent about it and I think this pushes me to work even harder.”

Yip is now looking forward to the Rio Paralympics in 2016. “This competition has been a very good point in which we sit down and start to look at what else we can improve on so we can do even better for Rio. We have nine more months of training to Rio which is actually really short but that keeps us motivated to want to train harder and swim faster. No matter what the results are in Rio, I know that as long as I’ve done my best I’ll be happy about it,” Yip concluded.

Women’s S2-S5 50m Backstroke Results
1st Yip Pin Xiu (Singapore) – 1:01.61 (WR for S2 class)
2nd Nguyen Thi Den (Vietnam) – 1:01.63
3rd Goh Rui Si Theresa (Singapore) – 1:01.73
4th Danh Thi My Thanh (Vietnam) – 1:05.69

Women’s S1-S5 100m Freestyle Results
1st Goh Rui Si Theresa (Singapore) – 1:45.51
2nd Yip Pin Xiu (Singapore) – 2:11.86
3rd Danh Thi My Thanh (Vietnam) – 2:18.50
4th Nguyen Thi Den (Vietnam) – 2:20.01
5th Pornpimon Sutthichittanon (Thailand) – 2:24.77

Women’s S2-S5 50m Freestyle Results
1st Goh Rui Si Theresa (Singapore) – 49.41s
2nd Yip Pin Xiu (Singapore) – 1:01.23
3rd Nguyen Thi Den (Vietnam) – 1:03.45
4th Danh Thi My Thanh (Vietnam) – 1:05.61

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