Story by Iman Hashim/Red Sports. Photos by Les Tan/Red Sports
The Singapore Sports School quartet won the U-19 4x100m race in a time of 50.59s. Dunman High were second in 55.77s while St Anthony’s Canossian were third in 56.96s. (Photo 1 © Les Tan/Red Sports)
Bishan Stadium, Saturday, July 2, 2016 — Singapore Sports School (SSP) won every event that they took part in at the inaugural Singapore Youth Olympic Festival (SYOF) athletics competition.
Athletics – along with fencing – are new additions to the SYOF roster this year, which also includes 3-on-3 basketball, badminton, football 7s, rugby 7s, sailing, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo and volleyball.
The SYOF, into its sixth edition, is a fun multi-sport event for youths aged 18 and below to commemorate the anniversary of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games (YOG) held in Singapore in 2010.
The SYOF athletics meet had four events on offer: the 4x100m, 4x200m, 1000m Sprint Medley and Distance Medley relays. Participants ran in separate under-15 and under-19 categories.
SSP swept the gold medals in all four 4x100m races, all four 4x200m races, both u-15 girls and boys 1000m sprint medley relays, and the u-19 boys distance medley relay. In some events, SSP were represented by two teams, which achieved a one-two finish for the school.
For many of the u-15 SSP runners, the races were a fun warm-up leading up to the upcoming Western Australia Little Athletics (WALA) competition, which is an annual meet for youths aged 15 and below from Singapore, Malaysia and Western Australia.
For some others, specifically the Secondary One runners, it was an opportunity to chalk up relay experience with a new team. That was the case for the u-15 SSP 4x100m Team B consisting of Jeft Tay, Muhammad Adhwa, Muhamad Nurshahilmi and Nicholas Teo, who clocked 47.99 seconds to clinch the silver behind their fellow schoolmates.
Similarly, in the same race, the all-Secondary One quartet of Wellington Ho, Yau Bing Hui, Gabriel Tang and Ihwan Syafiq from Raffles Institution (RI) were running together for the first time. They clocked 54.54s to finish fourth.
Said second runner Bing Hui, “It was okay. We only had half a training session to practise relay passing before today. But I think we can train harder, and improve our strength and speed.”
Meanwhile, some runners used this meet as an opportunity to run with their teammates again for the last time, as was the case for North Vista Secondary’s u-19 boys 4x100m team. They finished second in their timed final behind SSP Team B, but were unfortunately disqualified.
Nonetheless, first runner Keiran Lim, 16, was satisfied. He said, “My team and I signed up (for the event) ourselves because it’s my final year in the school – three-quarters of the team are in our final year – so we wanted a final race for us to come together and end off on a good note. We are the same team that ran for B Div this year, and since we won’t get the chance to run together again, when we saw that we had this chance, we thought that we’d just sign up.”
“We trained for only around a week, so we’re quite pleased since we couldn’t train much due to a one-month break and also because we had to focus on our studies. (If not for the disqualification), we came in second (in our heat) so we’re quite pleased.”
Keiran’s North Vista juniors had more reason to cheer, as they clocked 50.90s to claim the bronze in the u-15 boys 4x100m relay. Three-quarters of the team were part of the quartet which finished sixth in the C Division 4x100m relay final at the 57th National Schools Track and Field Championships in April.
Said third runner Koh Shin Kiat, 14, “On Thursday, we were informed by our teacher that we were running in this event. So we had to prepare ourselves at the last minute. One of our main team members went overseas, so we were busy finding another runner.”
“Of course we can do better than we did just now, but I think it was a very good experience because it’s after the holidays and we only had two weeks of training. After exams, we took a one-month break and we only came back for training during the last week of June holidays. We had to train harder once we found out that we had a race.”
“For next year in B Div, we hope we can get into the final again. We will continue training hard.”
Shin Kiat also ran the third leg in the 4x200m relay, where North Vista clinched the silver in the u-15 boys race with a 1:50.46 timing.
North Vista had a decent outing in this meet, with two teams finishing first and third in the u-15 boys distance medley.
Meanwhile, Catholic Junior College (CJC), which claimed the A Division boys’ 4x100m relay silver at National Schools this year, clocked 44.85s to finish third in the u-19 4x100m relay at this meet. SSP Team A (42.95s) and SSP Team B (44.18s) came in first and second.
The CJC team was made up of Chow Kin Wei, S Shahmee Ruzain, Alphonsus Teow and Muhammad Hassan Khan. Three of them – with Hassan, who replaced Benedict Kwok, the only exception – were part of the silver-winning team at National Schools.
The same quartet ran in the u-19 4x200m relay later on the same day, finishing third in 1:36.31, once again behind SSP Team A and Team B.
On their reasons for taking part in this meet, 4x100m third runner and 4x200m first runner Alphonsus said, “We wanted to expose the new runners, and also Shahmee has an upcoming competition, so we wanted to keep him in the competitive mindset. For (Shahmee) he’s on season, so he’s been doing all the speed training and everything, but for the rest of us, we are just preparing for next year, like working on general stamina.”
Shahmee, who won the A Division sprint double at National Schools this year, is gearing up for the upcoming ASEAN School Games in Thailand where he will run in the 100m event and in the 4x100m relay, along with David Tameeris of Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), and Ryan James Tan and Prem Sathiamoorthy of RI.
On the race results, Shahmee, who ran the second leg for the 4x100m and the last leg for the 4x200m, said, “We were expecting to finish closer to Sports School (Team A), we weren’t expecting to finish so far away. We were also expecting to beat Sports School Team B, but fair enough, they ran a good run too. But I guess it’s our first race with a new team, so we’ll get used to it and start improving for next year’s Nationals.”
With the exception of Kin Wei, who is a second-year student at CJC, the rest of the quartet have a year left in the A Division and will likely form three-quarters of the CJC 4x100m relay team for National Schools next year.
More photos next page
Leave A Comment