Dec 05
SINGAPORE, 5 DECEMBER 2020– The Singapore National Olympic Qualifiers 2020 swimming competition continued behind closed doors at the OCBC Aquatic Centre on Saturday, 5 December.
Due to the restrictions on number of swimmers participating, only two events were swum in the evening finals session, which were the Men’s and Women’s 200m Freestyle and 200m Butterfly.
Darren Chua, who won 5 golds at the 2019 South-east Asian (SEA) Games on debut, clocked a time of 1:50.42 to finish first in the Men’s 200m Freestyle final, just narrowly missing out on the Olympic Games “B” cut time of 1:50.23s. Glen Lim was second in a time of 1:50.44s and Ardi Azman third in a time of 1:54.01s.
“I am actually pretty happy about my result. The way I swam the two hundred was very efficient but there are things to improve on”, said the 20-year-old defending SEA Games Champion.
He added, “I think what was lacking in my race was the backend speed. My first hundred was pretty well, but it is the second hundred that I need to work on, so I am going to put a lot more effort into backend speed during training.”
In the Men’s 200m Butterfly final, SEA Games bronze-medallist Ong Jung Yi also narrowly missed out on an Olympic Games “B” cut, when he touched first in a time of 2:00.65s, just a fraction off the “B” qualifying mark of 1:59.97s.
He said, “I think my race today was pretty good, doing a time pretty close to what I did at SEA Games last year. I just need to keep working on my endurance, especially the second hundred of my race. I definitely have a lot of room for improvement but overall, I think with my current state and current training programme, it is going quite well.”
“I was definitely trying to meet either the “A” cut, or “B” cut timings or get a timing as close as possible. I just wanted to try my very best, to go out with whatever I had to clock a time as an indicator to my performance and where I stand at this point”, added the 19-year-old.
On racing under controlled environments due to COVID-19, Chua said, “The pros for me is that everything is scheduled and compartmentalised, and everything is set to a timing. One of the cons is that we are very restricted on accessibility, on how much time we have to warm up, to stretch, to warm down, but it kind of forces us to warm up and warm down quicker and stops us from wasting time (from talking to everyone after our race) which allows us to get more rest in between the heats and finals.”
The Singapore National Olympic Qualifiers 2020 concludes on Sunday, with Men’s and Women’s 50m Freestyle, 200m Breaststroke, 200m Individual Medley and the 1500m Freestyle.