Story by REDintern Luke Chiang. Photos by Iman Hashim and Lim Yong Teck/Red Sports

Ow Yeong Wei Bin (#337) of SMU destroyed the competition in the Men's 400m Hurdles timed finals, clocking 54.28 seconds to set a new IVP championship record. (Photo 1 © Iman Hashim/Red Sports)

Ow Yeong Wei Bin (#337) of SMU destroyed the competition in the Men’s 400m Hurdles timed finals, clocking 54.28 seconds to set a new IVP championship record. (Photo 1 © Iman Hashim/Red Sports)

Home of Athletics, Saturday, January 18, 2020 — Ow Yeong Wei Bin of Singapore Management University (SMU) stormed to a 54.28 seconds finish in the Institute-Varsity-Polytechnic (IVP) Men’s 400-metre hurdles timed finals, annihilating the previous meet record of 55.40s set by Lim Kok Hoon, then of Ngee Ann Polytechnic, back in 1989.

The Hwa Chong Institution alumnus recently ran in the South East Asian (SEA) Games held in the Philippines last month finishing with a time of 52.46s.

“The goal for me today was to go for the record but I would have been okay if I didn’t break the record either since I’ve just come back from a break,” said Wei Bin, who currently holds the fastest electronic timing in this event by a Singaporean with a 52.44s clocked last year at the World University Games (WUG) in Italy.

Isaac Toh of Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) finished second almost seven seconds behind in 1 minute and 1.03 seconds, while teammate Silas Ng finished third with a 1:02.82 effort. Their positions in this event were the same as in the 110m Hurdles event last week.

In the Women’s 400m Hurdles, Celeste Goh of National University of Singapore (NUS) sailed to a fairly comfortable win with a timing of 1:08.01. Even though she was running in Lane 3, Celeste had made up the stagger on the hurdler in Lane 8 by the fifth hurdle and was unassailable.

“I wasn’t very prepared for hurdles this year so I didn’t manage to run the timing I wanted,” said the second-year life sciences undergraduate.

Noor Fatehah of NYP and Kang Pei Ling of Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) finished second and third with timings of 1:09.58 and 1:10.23 respectively.

When asked about her goals for the season, Celeste added: “I’ll definitely run more races this year. There’s always something to learn from every race run, so hopefully I’ll peak at Singapore Open and qualify for the ASEAN University Games.”

Celeste’s personal best in this event is 1:05.14 which she ran at last year’s Singapore Open, while she also holds the current National Schools A Division Girls’ record of 1:05.35.

Later in the day, the showdown in the Men’s 200m final saw a much tighter finish. The top four runners all finished in under 23 seconds with only 0.18 seconds separating the champion from third position.

Leading the sub-23 charge was 100m silver medalist Naqib Asmin of Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), who finished in a timing of 22.22s. Dexter Lin of NUS finished with the silver in 22.34s, while Calvin Quek of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) claimed the bronze in 22.40s adding to his 400m gold medal the previous week. A 22.91-second run by Elgene Chng of NUS meant that he had to miss out on the medals in fourth.

The Women’s 200m final saw Gwendolyn Therese Lim of Temasek Polytechnic win in a timing of 26.54s while Rebecca Tay of NYP and Zann Oh of Republic Polytechnic had to settle for silver and bronze respectively. Gwendolyn anchored her school’s 4x100m relay team to a gold medal later in the day.

Men’s 400m Hurdles Timed Finals Results
1st Ow Yeong Wei Bin (#337, Singapore Management University) — 54.28 seconds
2nd Isaac Toh Beam (#68, Nanyang Polytechnic) — 1:01.03
3rd Silas Ng Wei Hao (#67, Nanyang Polytechnic) — 1:02.82
4th Ng Jun Wei (#177, National University of Singapore) — 1:03.70
5th Gary Lim Wei Min (#173, National University of Singapore) — 1:05.71
6th Audie Goh (#8, Institute of Technical Education) — 1:06.50
7th Cowen Ong (#233, Temasek Polytechnic) — 1:08.61
8th Abdul Hakim B Abdul Jalil (#441, Temasek Polytechnic) — 1:08.64

Women’s 400m Hurdles Final Results
1st Celeste Goh Jia Rui (#127, National University of Singapore) — 1 minute 8.01 seconds
2nd Noor Fatehah Bte Mustaffa (#28, Nanyang Polytechnic) — 1:09.58
3rd Kang Pei Ling (#278, Singapore Institute of Management) — 1:10.23
4th Katherine Carino (#345, Singapore Polytechnic) — 1:11.12
5th Kerstin Ong (#322, Singapore Management University) — 1:16.35
6th Joanna Seet (#206, Ngee Ann Polytechnic) — 1:16.86
7th Renee Lum (#26, Nanyang Polytechnic) — 1:18.63
8th Goh Jing Rou (#195, Ngee Ann Polytechnic) — 1:34.33

Men’s 200m Final Results
1st Muhammad Naqib Bin Asmin (#402, Singapore University of Social Sciences) — 22.22 seconds
2nd Dexter Lin (#175, National University of Singapore) — 22.34
3rd Calvin Quek (#113, Nanyang Technological University) — 22.40
4th Elgene Chng Jun Yuan (#157, National University of Singapore) — 22.91
5th Deepaan Raaj (#369, Singapore Polytechnic) — 23.05
6th Lee Choon Loong (#448, Temasek Polytechnic) — 23.30
7th Samuel Lee Wei Jie (#54, Nanyang Polytechnic) — 23.30
8th Jeremy Koh (#222, Ngee Ann Polytechnic) — 24.18

Women’s 200m Final Results
1st Gwendolyn Therese Lim (#434, Temasek Polytechnic) — 26.54 seconds
2nd Rebecca Tay (#32, Nanyang Polytechnic) — 27.23
3rd Zann Oh Shu Yu (#249, Republic Polytechnic) — 27.32
4th Darshini Kuppusamy (#199, Ngee Ann Polytechnic) — 28.13
5th Celine Goe (#348, Singapore Polytechnic) — 28.17
6th Lua Yun Hui (#136, National University of Singapore) — 28.74
7th Ang Jiayin (#14, Nanyang Polytechnic) — 28.81
8th Dharani Ravi (#324, Singapore Management University) — 29.51

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