Schooling Scratches Final Day, But Quah Nails 50 Free NR In Singapore

50TH SINGAPORE NATIONAL AGE GROUP SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS (SNAGS)

• Tuesday, March 19th – Sunday, March 24th (Senior Swimmers)
• OCBC Aquatic Centre
• LCM
• Qualifying Meet for 2019 World Championships, 2019 World Junior Championships, 2019 SEA Games, 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games
• Meet Site
• SwimSwam Meet Preview
• Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap/Day 3 Recap/Day 4 Recap/Day 5 Recap
• Entry Lists/Results

The final day of the 50th Singapore National Age Group Swimming Championships (SNAGs) wrapped up at the OCBC Aquatic Centre today, but the session was without its mega-star Joseph Schooling.

After winning the men’s 100m free, 100m fly and 50m fly, Schooling was entered in the men’s 50m free and 200m fly, but wound up scratching the entirety of today’s events.

However, plenty of high-quality swimming still took place, especially when it came to on-fire Quah Ting Wen. Quah already notched a new Singaporean National Record in the women’s 100m freestyle, becoming the first-ever Singaporean female to dip under the 55-second threshold wit her new NR mark of 54.82.

The 27-year-old was back at her record-setting ways to close out the meet tonight, taking the women’s 50m freestyle in a cool 25.07. That sliced .2 off of her own NR set at this same meet 2 years ago.

Runner-up to Quah was Amanda Lim, who touched in 25.39, while Cheryln Yeoh rounded out the top 3 in 25.62. The trio of medalists all nailed SEA Games ‘A’ cuts for their efforts.

Said Quah after her new NR-setting performance, “I’m quite pleased, it was my best time by quite a fair bit. However, I really wanted to see myself go under 25, so I spoke with my coaches so we know what to work on training. This meet has been a confidence boost for me, for a while it has been sporadic improvement here and there, so it was fresh to have a good few days of racing and it makes me feel confident about my fitness levels and I have definitely enjoyed myself this meet.”

Gary Tan, National Training Centre Head Coach, added, “The way Ting approached the meet and the way she swam it, and breaking records after records, it is very rare of a senior level athlete to do what she did, and we cannot deny the fantastic job that Leonard (National Youth Head Coach) and the rest of team has done with her. She is starting to see that age is just a number and through these performances she is able to see that there are many people really rooting for her. When an athlete sees the extra step that the coach puts in, it really pushes the athlete to perform better. Ting put herself out there and did a fantastic job.”

Gan Ching Hwee of Swimfast Aquatic Club captured the women’s 1500m freestyle win in a time of 16:33.54, setting a new National Record in the process. That bested her own previous career-fastest of 16:39.70 set at last year’s Asian Games.

Jonathan Tan took the men’s 50m free in 22.52, collecting an SEA Games A cut, while Teong Tzen Wei accomplished the same feat with his runner-up mark of 22.61.