Brunei win 20 medals at Sabah swim tourney

SEVEN of the Sultanate's top swimmers from the Brunei Amateur Swimming Association (Basa) returned home with a medal haul of two gold, 12 silver and six bronze medals from last weekend's 43rd Sabah Age Group Aquatic Championships held at the Aquatic Centre at the Kota Sports Complex in Likas.

All the swimmers contributed to the medal tally with Siu Kent Chung (one gold two silver and one bronze), Lim Jyh Jye (one silver and one bronze), Desmond Lee Edward (three silver and one bronze), Anderson Lim Chee Wei (one gold and one silver), Amanda Liew Jia Xin (one silver and three bronze), Amnahliyani Md Husain (three silver) and Maria Grace Koh (one silver) delivering.

Three national records were also set. Anderson clocked 2:26.05 to break Felix Lee's record of 2:27.01 in the 200M Butterfly established in 2007 while Desmond Lee smashed Woo Boon Chun's record of 4:49.61 in the 400M Freestyle set in 2001 with a time of 4:42.47.

Jyh Jye registered 28.62 in the 50M Butterfly to erase his old record of 29.10 set in 2007.

Three age-group records were also broken at the meet.

Desmond Lee set the new record of 59.87 for the Group 2 (13-14 years old) 100M Freestyle event after breaking the 1999 record of 1:00.05 set by Md Dzairenny Hj Muslim.

Liew broke the Group 1 (15-17 years old) records in the 50M and 100M Freestyle events. She clocked 28.90 in the 50M Freestyle to erase Koh's old record of 29.74 set in 2008. Her time of 1:04.83 in the 100M Freestyle also broke Koh's mark of 1:05.30.

However, national swimming coach Eva Wong was not satisfied with the results of the delegation which finished seventh amongst 13 teams.

"I'm not that satisfied because I believe that they could have done better. We put in a lot of effort in preparing for the Sabah tournament but training was disrupted a couple of times due to the rainy weather which I believe affected them," said Wong, in an interview with The Brunei Times yesterday.

The swimmers were selected based on their performances during the time trials to select the representives for the 2010 Malaysia Games (Sukma) and Wong had put this as a good opportunity to get good sparring partners to improve the swimmers' personal bests to stand a chance to be selected to represent the country at the Games.

"We had the least number of swimmers and still managed a good number of medals. But the main aim for them was to improve and try to top the Sukma benchmark," said Wong. "Some of them are very close to achieving the benchmark in their respectively events with their improved times. Now we have to focus on improving some more to represent the Sultanate at the Games."

More than 300 swimmers from 13 teams or clubs, including two teams from Brunei (Panaga Stingrays) took part in the Sabah Amateur Swimming Association (SASA) annual event that was organised by the Penampang Swimming Association Sabah.

Wong is looking forward to the Brunei Age-Group Swimming Championships on March 5-7 at the Aquatic Centre.The Brunei Times