PETALING JAYA: Young swimmer Christina Loh, the only ‘rose among the thorns’, made a breakthrough peformance for Malaysia by reaching the 50m breaststroke final in her maiden participation in the World Junior Championships in Lima on Wednesday.
The 16-year-old overcame jet-lag and the cold weather to earn a creditable sixth place finish for Malaysia after clocking 32.65 in the final, won by Lisa Fissneider of Italy in 31.51.
She became the first Malaysian woman swimmer to qualify for a world junior championships final after clocking the seventh fastest time of 32.59 in the semi-finals.
Christina started well in the preliminaries as she clocked the fourth fastest time of 32.36 on Tuesday.
Although Christina did not manage to improve on her national record of 32.29 set at the World Championships in Shanghai last month, it was another encouraging sign ahead of the Indonesia SEA Games later in November.
Christina will be making her second appearance at the SEA Games and the hope is on her to power her way to bag the gold medal in the 50m breaststroke race in Palembang, which will be contested for the first time.
National coach Paul Birmingham said Christina gave a good account of herself by making the final when the expectations were not on her.
“It’s a bonus as I said earlier it will already be good if our swimmers can reach the semi-finals (top 16) in their strong events.
“It’s a bigger meet and the times are pretty fast compared to previous editions, so it’s a good effort from her.
“She could have improve with a better start but it’s okay as she remains consistent with her performance curve especially in another corner of the world,” said Birmingham.
Tern Jian Han and Ian James Barr finished 18th (58.44) and 21st (58.81) respectively in the boys’ 100m backstroke.
Ian also did not perform strongly in the 200m individual medley, finishing 21st in 2:08.59.
Vernon Lee was placed 25th in the boys’ 200m (1:55.98) and 22nd in the 400m (4:04.63) freestyle races.
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