A return to remember: Ting Wen marks first competition after Olympics with three national records

Quah Ting Wen made her return to competitive swimming one to cherish and remember for a long time when she completed her hat-trick of new national records on the last day of the 40th National Age-Group Swimming Championships at the Singapore Sports School pool.

The 16-year-old Raffles Junior College student, who took a break from swimming after the Beijing Olympics and only resumed training at the start of the year, broke the national 100m freestyle record yesterday, during the Girls 15-17 years event.

She clocked 55.80secs to smash Joscelin Yeo’s 10-year-old record of 56.05sec, which was set at the 1999 South-east Asian Games in Brunei. 

 

It was also her third national freestyle record in three days. 

 

On Friday, Ting Wen had broken the national 50m freestyle record, also held by Joscelin. She followed that up by breaking the national 200m freestyle record on Saturday. 

 

And as it were in the 50m and 200m freestyle events, Ting Wen’s time in the 100m freestyle was also a new national Under-17 record. It eclipsed the time of 56.14secs which she had set at the Beijing Olympics. 

 

The Swimfast Aquatic Club swimmer’s achievements at the Championships will be a huge boost to her confidence and morale as she gets down to the task of qualifying for this December’s SEA Games in Laos.

Apart from Tao Li, Ting Wen is also expected to play a big part in delivering the bulk of Singapore’s gold medals in swimming at the biennial regional Games. 

Her feat yesterday also meant that a total of five national open records were broken during the course of the Age-Group Championships.

The other two were contributed by Parker Lam, who set a new men’s 50m breaststroke mark of 29.59sec, Mark Tan who clocked a new national mark of 2min 20.71sec in the men’s 200m breaststroke.

Yet, the total haul could well have been seven if Rainer Ng and Shana Lim had both been a shade faster in their respective events.

Rainer had tied the men’s national 50m backstroke mark of 26.96sec while Shana Lim had equalled the women’s national 50m backstroke record of 29.20sec.

A total of 15 national age-group records were also re-written during the three-day long Championships: 10 under-17 records and five Under-14 marks. There were also two national under-17 marks that were tied.

You can see the full list of new records set at the Age-Group Championships and their owners here.

Swimfast Aquatic Club, the swimming school run by former national swimmer and occasional national coach David Lim, emerged at the top of the overall standings with 58 golds, 50 silvers and 27 bronzes.

Chinese Swimming Club was second with 39 golds while ACE Swim Club, which is helmed by See Puay Kheng, finished third with 33 golds.

Yours in sport

Singapore Sports Fan