Asian Games Swimming: How Singapore measures up against the rest of Asia

By Erwin Wong/Red Sports

Team Singapore’s swimmers finished their Asian Games campaign with one gold and one silver medal, both won by Tao Li in the 50 and 100 metres Butterfly respectively.

This put them fourth on the swimming medal tally, based on gold medal count. Hosts China are the runaway leaders with 24 golds, 16 silvers and 14 bronze medals garnered during the six-day competition.

Japan are second with 9-18-12 and South Korea are third with 4-3-6. No other country won a gold medal.

Kazakhstan are fifth with a silver and bronze, while Hong Kong, India and Chinese Taipei round off the medal tally with two, one and one bronze each.

Singapore’s national schools swimming and athletics competitions adopt a scoring system in which schools get nine points for having an athlete in first position, seven points for second place, six for third, and so on. Only finals are taken into consideration, and only the top eight receive points.

If this scoring system was incorporated into the Asian Games swimming competition, team placings will be slightly different.

The trio of China, Japan and South Korea are still the runaway leaders, but Hong Kong will be in fourth place with 70 points, boosted by their female squad having 16 finalists.

Singapore moves down one notch to fifth with 58 points, while Thailand are the next best South-East Asian nation with 33.

Of the 15 2009 SEA Games gold medalists, only Malaysia’s Siow Yi Ting did not feature at the Asian Games. Other medalists who were not in Guangzhou were Indonesia’s Donny Utomo, Malaysia’s Marellyn Lammert Liew Yien Yee, and Singapore’s Roanne Ho, Cheryl Lim and Russell Ong.

Asian Games swimming points table (Male)

Asian Games swimming points table (Female)

Asian Games swimming points table (All)