19TH ASIAN GAMES
- Sunday, September 24th – Friday, September 29th (swimming)
- Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre Aquatic Sports Arena, Hangzhou, China
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Central
- Entries
- Results
- Day 2 Finals Live Recap
- Day 3 Finals Live Recap
- Day 4 Finals Live Recap
While most NCAA swimmers are stateside gearing up for the young season, a handful of swimmers are competing in major international meets this fall.
Case in point: Indiana freshman Mikkel Lee is currently in China, competing on behalf of Singapore at the 19th Asian Games.
Lee has made a splash in Hangzhou, including a 47.25 anchor leg on Singaore’s 4×100 free relay. That leg brought the Singapore team to within half a second of Japan’s bronze medal squad.
That’s a big time swim for the 20-year-old Lee — not only was it nearly two seconds faster than his flat-start lifetime best (49.10), but it was also the best anchor leg in the field. In fact, it was the second-fastest split of the entire relay, behind only Pan Zhanle‘s 47.06 leadoff for China. Lee could make a run at Joseph Schooling’s national record (48.27) in the future.
Lee has also finished 7th in the 50 fly (23.60) this week, and split 49.44 anchoring Singapore’s medley relay prelims squad.
SwimSwam spoke with Indiana head coach Ray Looze, who had this to say about the rising star:
Since Ching Hwee Gan came to Indiana, it has opened up opportunities for us in Singapore without question. We could see he had vast potential, but in Singapore all males must do two years of mandatory military duty, which definitely made it challenging for him to swim at that time. Mikkel did a Lactate set short course yards before he departed that was very impressive, so we were optimistic about the Asian Games.
Singapore nationals Lee, Ching Hwee Gan, and Chiok Sze Yeo will all be on the Hoosiers’ roster this season, part of a strong international contingent that has Indiana poised to be one of the top combined programs in the nation for the upcoming NCAA season.
You can read more about the Indiana men here as well as more about Lee’s appearance on the Hoosiers’ roster here.
Joseph Schooling just split a 47.19 at the end of practice in a mizuno GX sonic 3
Source: trust me bro
how does age work with international students? do they get the full 4 years regardless of their age like a normal American freshman or are there age rules that come into play at some point?
You have 5 years to complete 4 years of eligibility and it starts once you graduate HS. This excludes the unique extra COVID year exception.
from some stuff online it looks like Singapore high school typically ends at about the same age as US high schools, so that means he only gets a couple years of eligibility?
genuinely someone explain this to me instead of just disliking it lol, is it
1: international students get longer grace periods after HS ends (4 years eligibility)
2: he was able to delay high school graduation for swimming (4 years eligibility)
3: Singaporeans do actually end high school at 20 and I was misinformed (4 years eligibility)
4: None of the above and he has less than 4 years of eligibility left
5: Something else ??
Surely, if they are unable to start college/university for two years after high school due to the compulsory national service, they have no control over when they start. Common sense would tell me (a Brit) that they ought to still get 4 years’ eligibility.
Thats the way it works for Mormons who go on mission, but maybe that’s only given because religion is a protected class.
Ridiculous that religion in this context is placed as more important than national service, which one cannot avoid.
I’m not an expert, but I think the clock starts the day they attend their first college class regardless of their age at the time.
That was epic. Well done Mikkel!
47.2 should convert to 41 or better in SCY. That’s a big time split.
Kind of amazing that it “only” converts to a 41. There were well over 20 guys who split 41 on relays at NCAAs last year. People talk about NCAAs being one of the fastest meets in the world, but is it really true that a second-best split of the Asian Games field would just be run-of-the-mill at NCAAs? Is this just a conversion anomaly?
The latter.
I don’t trust SCY LCM conversion.
According to Swimswam SCY-LCM conversion, Kate Douglas 1:48 200 IM would translate to 2.05 LCM and her 2:01 200 breast would translate to 2:15 LCM.
Those who watched Fukuoka know that’s not right lol.
The conversion is absolutely atrocious.
“Lee could make a run at Joseph Schooling’s national record (48.27) in the future.”
Well ya, if we’re just gonna ignore Schooling’s “in practice” best times. 🙄
His lifetime best is 49.14 from 2023 Singapore Nationals. That World Aquatics info seems wrong
He got that dawg in him
Wow didn’t realize how good this kid was