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Laura Chia
After finishing 10th among 16 boys in the all-events to qualify for the Masters at the Asian Youth Tenpin Bowling Championships, Xavier Teo upped his game to win the gold medal in Kuching, Sarawak, yester-day.
The 18-year-old Singaporean trailed overnight leader Shahrukh Amin of Malaysia by 38 pinfalls after
the first block of eight games, but fin-ished strongly in the second block to finish with 3,569 pinfalls on the final day of the April 17-25 tournament.
He qualified for the stepladder fi-nal as the top seed ahead of Malaysia’s Muhammad Hafiz (3,499) and South Korea’s Moon Ha-yeong (3,450).
Hafiz beat Moon 224-165 to earn a shot at the gold against Xavier and edged the first game 225-224.
But the Ngee Ann Polytechnic stu-
dent bounced back with a 208-202 for a combined score of 432-427.
Xavier called his five-pin victory his “greatest” achievement ever.
He said: “During the stepladder fi-nal, I just told myself to be in the present, thinking only about the processes as the outcome was un-controllable.
“This competition is very impor-tant to us... (and) shows that every-thing I have been working on back home, like focusing on the process, is working out. And I will continue to work even harder.”
In the girls’ Masters, Charlene Lim took the bronze behind cham-pion Gillian Lim of Malaysia and
South Korean Shin Hye-bin. Lim, 20, was second overall after
the two blocks of 16 games, but set-tled for third after she lost 200-191 to Lim in the first round of the stepladder final.
Said the Republic Polytechnic stu-dent: “I haven’t been bowling well all week. It was terrible.
“All I wanted was to contribute an-other medal to the team and have another shot to redeem myself.”
The Republic ended their cam-paign with six golds and three bronzes, bettering their previous best in the biennial tournament in 1983, when they won four golds, one silver and three bronzes.
Other than Xavier’s triumph, Sin-gapore won the boys’ and girls’ all-events and team titles, as well as the boys’ doubles.
National head coach Helmi Chew praised the team, saying: “In this outing, we learnt a lot about the character of our players and even the coaching team.
“This will help to build the bond and team spirit among the team and help us move forward to achieve better results.”
Singapore Bowling Federation president Jessie Phua said: “It’s a sterling performance by the entire team. An entire village worked hard for these emerging bowlers and we are thankful they kept their compo-sure, dug deep and delivered.
“We are very happy that our young guns are on track and we hope they will stay the course as they have every opportunity to be our future world champions.”
Some 173 athletes from 26 coun-tries will compete in the Singapore leg of the World Para Swimming World Series from May 10 to 12.
The series, which will make its debut in Asia, is the first world-level para-swimming competition to be held in Singapore.
It will attract world-class swim-mers like four-time Paralympian Jessica Long from the United States, who has 13 gold, six silver and four bronze Paralympic medals, and three-time Para-lympian Sophie Pascoe from New Zealand, who won nine gold and six silver Paralympic medals, said the organisers yesterday.
Singapore’s Toh Wei Soong and Ernie Gawilan from the Philip-pines will also renew their rivalry in the men’s 50m freestyle S7 event after their close race at the Asian Para Games in October last year. Toh clocked 29.01sec to pip Gawilan to the gold by 2.91sec in Jakarta.
Toh said: “Ernie has been a well-known swimmer for several years, and he was there at the beginning of my career at the 2015 Asean Para Games.
“Having him as a competitor keeps me grounded as an athlete, and he needs me as much as I need him, because we help each other to improve by being there.
“I look forward to seeing him again.”
Singapore Disability Sports Coun-cil (SDSC) executive director Kelly Fan is hoping for a strong turnout at the OCBC Aquatic Centre during the meet.
She said: “Our athletes, with or without disabilities, need a strong home crowd behind them. How-ever, it’s not easy to get people to come forward, especially if they don’t understand para-sports.
“There are also other main-stream events competing for pub-lic attention on the same days, so we can only hope for the best – that the stands will be filled eventu-ally.”
Xener Gill
•E-mail Singapore Disability SportsCouncil at [email protected] to reserve tickets. Free for heats (from 9am) and $2 each for finals (from 5.30pm).
Xener Gill
He knew the long-standing record was within reach and could barely sleep the night before his A Divi-sion 200m individual medley final.
When 17-year-old Bradley Tan fin-ished his Schools National swim-ming championships race yester-day at the OCBC Aquatic Centre
and turned around to squint at the electronic scoreboard to find that he had set a new mark, he could hardly contain his joy.
“Breaking the record really felt great. Touching the wall and seeing that my timing was under the record time made me very happy,” said the Anglo-Chinese School (Indepen-dent) student, whose 2min 10.27sec effort bettered Ren Guan Ji’s meet
record of 2:10.49 set in 2011.The Year 5 student, who won the
B Division race in 2:12.15 last year, said he was nervous before the fi-nal, but had a game plan towards achieving his target.
He said: “For the backstroke leg on the second lap, I really pushed very hard because I knew that was my weak point.
“Just focusing on that leg helped
me to break the record.“I knew that my mental strength
was there this time as I had a clear target in my head so that gave me the confidence to beat the record.”
Cherlyn Yeoh of Raffles Institu-tion (RI) also set a meet record of 25.66sec in the A girls’ 50m freestyle, 0.45sec faster than the 26.11 set by national swimmer Nur Marina Chan in 2014.
The 18-year-old Year 6 student-said: “One of the things I tried to change this year was to not breathe off the dive and to try to get a good break out.”
She added: “I was a bit nervous but, hearing the supporters cheer for me, it really helped to calm my nerves.”
Also setting a new meet record in the B boys’ 50m breaststroke was
RI’s Leow Li Shen, whose 29.71sec effort erased the 29.78sec mark that he set in Monday’s heats.
The 16-year-old Leow, who shared a laugh with his teammate in the next lane before the race, said: “Every millisecond in a race counts, so it was important for me to max-imise my race.
“During my warm-up, my coach made some changes in my break-out technique and that helped me to bring my timing down.
“It definitely feels great to be able to match myself and be even better.
“To me, this just shows that I can be better than what I already am.”
Star-studded field for world para swim meet
School sports
Focus on backstroke puts Bradley on front foot
XAVIER STRIKES AGAINST ODDSS’pore clinch 6 golds and 3 bronzes at Asian Youth C’ships, their best result since 1983
Singapore bowlers Charlene Lim and Xavier Teo posing with their medals at the Asian Youth Tenpin Bowling Championships yesterday. Lim won bronze in the Masters final while Xavier clinched gold. PHOTO: SINGAPORE BOWLING FEDERATION
Bradley Tan of ACS (I) pushing hard yesterday during the backstroke leg of his A Division 200m individual medley final. He won the event in a meet record of 2min 10.27sec, bettering the previous mark of 2:10.49. ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
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C8 SPORT | THE STRAITS TIMES | FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2019 |
