How did our Singapore swimmers fare at 27th SEA Games?

 

In recent times, Quah Zheng Wen who is just 17 years old (born 1997), has been heralded as the new golden boy of Singapore swimming.

On the final night of swim competition, Quah Zheng Wen's first race saw him clinching the 200m freestyle bronze medal with a time of 1:51.66. His second race, the men's 200m butterfly earned him a silver in 2:01.65. This meant he joined the ranks of Joseph Schooling and Zach Ong with seven individual SEA Games medals.

Team Singapore swim team's performance

Zheng Wen then teamed up with Singapore swimmers Joseph Schooling, Christopher Cheong and Clement Lim in the men's 4x100m medley relay. They were going up against defending champions Indonesia who were favoured to win the event. For the uninformed, the medley relay is a form of swimming competition where a team of four swims 100 metres each in the following order Backstroke-Breastroke-Butterfly-Freestyle.

Zheng Wen led the team by starting off the race in the backstroke clocking in a split time of 56.89s in second place, a split second behind their Indonesian counterparts. Christopher followed up with 1:04.51 on the breaststroke falling behind Thailand which took over the 2nd place spot. Joseph powered through on the butterfly at 51.98s to regain Singapore's second place position behind Indonesia before Clement finished it off with 50.24s on the freestyle.

The final timing for the Singaporeans was a 3:43.62 finish; only 1.97 seconds behind the Indonesians who defended their title successfully.  Although they had to settle for a silver medal, the quartet managed to break the national open time of 3:44.15 which is a huge achievement in itself.

It was a successful campaign for our swim team, and Singapore proudly took home the largest medal haul this year.